So much has been going on lately I don’t even know where to begin. I literally have been unable to start this post and once I did It’s taken me three days to finish it…
It is decidedly SO much easier to post blogs about food than about”life” lately. It’s not even that life hard right now, but that everything is up and down and all around. Some days I feel like I am spiraling so fast and out of control I dont even know what direction Im going in. Other days I feel like time is dragging by and I am going crazy because of it. I often find myself stressing out because “I dont have enough time” to get everything done…yet on those slow days I never manage to take advantage of it becuase I am too busy tryng to recoop from the crazy spiral the days before.
Anyway, LIFE:
We got my car working, you know the one that has been broken since last August?? Well it is finally running. Eric did a great job working his butt off to learn how to do it and I am so thankful to have it back. I am even more thankful that now my kids can be efficiently separated when we go for a drive in the car, seeing as we spend a lot of time going to and from activities…in the car this is a wonderful change. As i enjoy the return of my big red car a somber thought enters my mind… Eric will be leaving a next week for a job in Arizona and may possibly have to take my car with him…. I hate that I just got my car back and now its going to be gone again, but I understand why he needs it, but understanding doesn’t make it any easier.
I am so grateful that he didn’t have to go to the last one on January 9th and thankful for this extra time with him. In these last few weeks we were able to rebuild our garden beds, move around the bunny cages, clean out a lot of junk from in front of our house and just spent quality time together as a family… including sharing a friendly 24 hour stomach bug. The reason he did not go on that job was because the red car was not finished. Now he has no excuse, he has to go on this job and because we are now into the end of Jan, beginning of February – once he goes…hes gone.
He could go anywhere; Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Washington…. heck his dad has even been talking about new contracts in Hawaii. I have committed to making sure the kids and I go visit him more which will me having to arrange “farm sitters” and allow a disruption to our routine and schedule we fall into when he leaves, but we hope it will make things easier in the long run; for all of us. Peytne cried for Daddy and repeated over and over again “I wanna see daddy, wheres daddy, I wanna see daddy” the day Eric was sick and slept all day. It broke my heart even though I knew he would feel better soon and when she woke up she could see him… I cringe knowing the time will be coming soon where Mommy won’t be good enough, Skype won’t be good enough, Kaelob and Haylee won’t be good enough… and there isn’t a thing we can do to make her understand why he is gone.
My gutt tells me it will be okay, my gut reminds me that I’ve been through this age/stage of life with both Kaelob and Haylee and they seem to have come out the other side unscarred. Neither of them enjoy their daddy traveling for work, but they understand. But like I said before, understanding it doesn’t make it any easier… Kaelob still goes through a week or two where he shuts down and defy’s all the rules and Haylee prays every night for him to get a new job or she goes through weeks where she cries at random times because she just “misses him so much”. She is definitely much more open about her feelings but can be consoled more often than not with a quick conversation on the phone.
Even I am panicking inside, not just because of how the kids are going to handle the transition but ME. He has spoiled me (dont tell him I said that). I keep telling myself one of these days I am going to go back to getting up at 5am, feeding all the animals then watching the sunrise with my cup of coffee in hand, devotional in the other and wait in the silence of the house until the kids wake up one by one…. peaceful right?? Well not as peaceful as staying IN bed while your wonderful husband lets the animals out and feeds them, makes you a pot of coffee and gets the kids ready for school. Spoiled.
I have been able to take Haylee to ballet on tuesday mornings while he says home and cleans the house, OR he takes the girls while I stay home and get my OCD on. Ill take Kaelob to Karate in the afternoons and be able to sit there and watch him in peace while Eric is at home with the girls doing dishes and putting the laundry away! I have been able to go out for coffee and meet up with some friends I haven’t seen in a while or go to my very first class for school and not stress or worry about the kids getting to bed okay. ALL that is going to change.
My heart starts pounding and my throat closes up. I get dizzy and think my God, I’m going to die just thinking about it! I just wrote a three page essay in class Wednesday night on “time wasters” and the things that generally hold people back from effective time management. I had to label what things characterized me, how I felt I was with time management and which things I allowed to suck away hours of my life. …oh the irony. Possibly if I spent less time blogging, less time Facebooking, less time exploring Pinterest and more time getting things done I wouldn’t stress out so much about Eric leaving, but I have been spoiled and become so lazy that now… now is when I start to panic.
I have even more pressure to effectively manage my time becuase I am now enrolled in this BSOL program at Azusa Pacific where the 3 units of a regular semester college course is crammed into a 5 week class and continue doing so for 11-18 months until my degree is finally completed. I can’t wait to be done. I have literally been going to college off an on for the last 8 years. I can’t wait to see what I can do with a degree in organizational leadership and how much I can use the information I am learning to improve in all the areas I volunteer in….but first, I have to go one week at a time, one class at a time and learn to prioritize “First things first”.
One very disheartening thing happened this week… a wonderful lady I have worked with for the last 7 years found out her sister passed away and her husband is currently in the hospital. She suffers from the same kidney disease that eric and his father have (polycystic kidney disease). Her only son also has the disease along with a large portion of her side of the family; including this particular sister. Her sister had her kidney transplant just a few years ago but found out recently that she had cancer, lymphoma. They were taking scans and discovering that it had spread to her brain and she was not doing very well the last time I spoke with Marjorie. My heart hurt just thinking about the reality of fighting for your life, fighting for a cure praying for a cure only to go through major surgery, receive a new kidney then later find out you have cancer… a deadly QUICK cancer. Wow. I am speechless. I can only imagine what her family is going through… no I can’t.
Heart failure, seizures, aneurysms, stroke… these are all serious complications that can be a result of having PKD, but cancer??? I had never really thought about it before. I knew Marjorie herself had battled breast cancer, but that was before her transplant and it never occurred to me that they could be related, just that she was incredibly unlucky. But after speaking with her about the situation with her sister (before she passed away) I realized how realistic this scenario is. With this disease your immune system is compromised. After a transplant (to save your life) you will be on anti-rejection drugs that lower your immune system hopefully just enough to allow your body to stay relatively healthy while preventing it from noticing the “foreign” organ and rejecting it. Because of this Marjorie’s sister’s body was unable to fight off the cancer that began attacking her body. Because of the drugs that were trying to save her life… she lost her life… tragic.
PLEASE pray for Marjorie and her family.
How can I pray for you this week?
They are in our prayers!