Grandpa Update 8/26/2013

For those of you who are friends with my family who have been praying for my Grandpa:

So it has been a crazy roller coaster and we pretty much witnessed a miracle. Last Monday night, my Grandpa was at his very lowest. Basically, his body was declining and vitals failing and the doctors told my Mom and Grandma that unless they increased medical intervention, Grandpa wouldn't make it. Grandma knew my Grandpa wouldn't want to live helplessly with no improvement and so they had basically decided that it was about the time to release him to hospice and bring him home to Yoakum for his last days. Tuesday morning, my uncles and Grandma went in to meet with hospice and they walked into my Grandpa's room and he was basically sitting up, waved at them, and said "hey guys, great to see y'all!" Whoa! He had been basically unconscious for 6 days, not recognizing anyone or having any mental cognition. Tuesday he knew everyone by name and he asked about everyone who wasn't there...he has 3 kids, 3 kid in laws, 10 grandkids, and 9 great grandkids! Everyone was cautiously optimistic as we'd heard of people having one good day before the end. The next day came and he had improved even more and so on and so on. My mom said its been the craziest thing she's ever seen in her life. He was basically dead and then life came back into him overnight. My family is claiming a miracle!

Grandpa told us over and over that he told God he was ready to go home. Grandpa is a Christian and we all have 100% confidence of where he was going, but he said that God just let him know it wasn't quite time yet. He's 86! So its hard to know how to see all this as he's lived a wonderful, full life. The doctors said they wanted to do an angiogram to determine what caused the heart attack and if you know my Grandpa, he doesn't put much stock in medical procedures and such. We didn't expect him to want the angiogram, but he said God kept him around so he might as well find out what happened. They performed the test and determined all 4 passages to his heart were clogged and he needs a quadruple bypass. Yikes! Again, we didn't expect him to allow the surgery as he said he'd never go under the knife, but he said that if God wanted to keep him around for some reason, he might as well improve his quality of life (as he understood he'd just be another heart attack waiting to happen AND he's been having some really bad breathing problems due to his heart).

So...Grandpa is undergoing heart surgery on Wednesday at 8:30am. Again, my Grandpa said that if God wants to take him on the table, so be it. If not, he'll come out in better health than he started. ha! What a very practical view of things.
So at this point, the prayers requested are for his surgery...of course for the doctors wisdom and procedural focus and then of course for my Grandma and the rest of the family to just have peace through the rest of this and then for the probable marathonish rehab process.

Grandpa Update 8/17/2013

I'm really sensitive about flooding people's Facebook walls so thought I'd post a Grandpa update here and those who are praying and know my family can read it.

Just talked to my mom and the hope is high but morale is low. They are several days in now and Grandpa did wake up. He was interactive and recognized people yesterday morning but as the day wore on, he was less and less cognizant which of course is hard on everybody, especially my Grandma. The doctors are saying that is normal though because as the medically induced coma medicine wore off, he began to feel himself again and he is in extreme pain, most likely caused by the CPR procedures. They aren't sure if he has broken ribs yet, but for sure bruised up pretty badly. So the pain meds are making him distant and out of it.
So right now, there are just so many medicines and so much medical procedure that its still hard to tell how he'll be. We think though that this is all fairly normal and there is hope of recovery...even though it'll be a marathon.
Specific prayer requests are for Grandpa and his pain and of course his recovery, and for Grandma...that she would have the supernatural strength and comfort to make it through this long process and see her sweet husband in so much pain.
Thanks for all your support and prayers. My mom said they are very aware of the prayer support they've been receiving and are so appreciative.

My adorable Grandpa and Grandma at my cousin's wedding this summer!

Joy and Purpose!

I read a friend's blog earlier today that inspired me to write this one. She is a stay at home mom and was honestly admitting to the intangible burden that sometimes hovers over stay at home moms. I think it is a common story...an intelligent, good looking woman who works in the corporate world and lives life on her own schedule doing the things she enjoys and spending money where she wants because she makes it herself....to the contrasting life of a Mommy who loves her kids with her whole heart but who's new life challenge is getting out of her pajamas by noon and wondering why getting her children fed and the laundry folded and the bajillion other things that are on the list done is so stinkin hard! I have a few friends who have gone through this and I'm not exactly in either one of those two boats so I'm not gonna act like I have all the answers because I absolutely don't!

However, I have a unique life situation that falls somewhere in between there, and I think as a human, we all struggle with purpose in life, which is what the burdens all come down to anyway. I often look at my life and wonder about my purpose. As a Christian, I know it is to bring honor and praise to my Lord in everything that I do and to work for an eternal purpose of telling other people about Jesus in order to expand his Kingdom and save lives from hopeless and horrible eternal separation from Him.

However, the reality is that we live in a day to day life. We have to run errands. We have to raise our kids. We have to make money. We have to eat. We have to budget our time. Etc Etc Etc. We are blessed to live in a first world country, but along with that blessing comes the curse of decisions, decisions, decisions...because we have so many resources which creates so many options which subsequently creates so many distractions from our true purpose.

So being purposeful...that's been rolling around in my head lately and I've been wondering what that looks like in my life. The last thing I want to do by "being purposeful" is to add stuff to my plate of things to do. I already have a full time job, a husband, a child, a kitchen that requires time every day, a laundry room full of clothes, a house to clean, dogs to walk, a body to attempt to take care of etc etc. I guess the question is how do I be purposeful with my free time to accomplish things that make me feel....accomplished. And not just spinning around in circles letting days go by feeling cruddy about myself.

I don't have the answers. My life isn't nearly as balanced as I'd like for it to be. My body is dying to be on a regular work out schedule which includes playing competitive sports (because I'm really bad about desiring to work out just to work out...I like having a "purpose" in my working out :-)

I don't have it figured out...My life is full of baby steps of learning...but I have made 2 recent baby steps that have brought a lot of joy and purpose to my life so I thought I'd share and I'd love for you to share anything that you've done to bring some clarity and purpose to your life.

1) For a few years, its been on my bucket list to sponsor a child through Compassion International. Its an organization that's been around since the 1950s that ranks in the Top 1% of charities every year because of its professionalism, legitimacy, and effectiveness. Growing up, my family sponsored a boy named Donald from Kenya. I remember writing and receiving letters and photos from him every year. I wanted to do the same for our family. So several months ago, I started researching and I got totally overwhelmed. There were so many faces staring back at me on the screen. I felt like if I chose any one of them, it'd be like rejecting all the rest! I couldn't decide so, sadly, I walked away from the whole thing. I think it may have been meant to be though because I was re-inspired a few nights ago and we found the PERFECT child. His name is Sabirou and he is from Burkina Faso in Africa. He's 6 years old and the best part is....he shares a birthday with Rhyder! This is going to be the coolest thing ever...as Rhyder grows up, he will get to be a part of preparing for Sabirou's birthday along with his own. We will get as creative as possible in sending him something special for his birthday that is within the very strict limitations of what we can send through the program...but still...if bookmarks, stickers, coloring book pages, and bandaids light up those kids lives...we will be sending 'em! Being a family who's income was cut in half and expenses increased due to a new business startup, the financial commitment was scary, but I just shuffled money in our tithe account to make the sponsorship money available so we didn't have to increase our budget. I am so excited about being Sabirou's American family and writing him letters as he grows and allowing him to be a part of a program in Africa that will help keep him healthy, nourished, educated, and most importantly knowledgeable about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! If you're interested in doing this, you can find out so much more at www.compassion.com.

Blog friends, meet our new little boy, Sabirou!! He's 6 and precious and I can't wait to find out more about him! 

2) The 2nd thing I've done recently that I think would be beneficial for a lot of people is creating a "Things That I've Done!" board on Pinterest. If you're like me, Pinterest is a black hole of time. "It is the site that never ends...it goes on and on my friends. Some people started playing it, not knowing what it was...and they'll continue playing it forever just because it is the site that never ends...it goes on and on my friends...." You get the point! The other day as I was pinning new ideas, I realized it was a worthless hobby to identify great ideas if I never DID any of them! So I quickly made a "Things I've Done!" board and in order to feel accomplished, I went back through my existing boards and moved everything over that I'd actually done into it. Again, if you're like me, the list was pitifully small. So I determined to pick a project in one of my existing boards and actually do it...and repeat...and repeat until my accomplishment board grew. I'm early on in this so don't go looking at my board to grade my progress :-) However, I wanted to bring purpose to the fun hobby of "Pinteresting"...I felt like this gave me a pick me up kick in the pants I had been needing. They are all great ideas and so fun and so creative but often spending time on Pinterest just frustrated because it got my creative juices flowing but then nothing actually came of it which made me feel overall inadequate and unaccomplished. So I wanted to change that!

Welp, that's all folks. Just a couple of things that have brought me joy and purpose in the past couple of weeks. Would love to hear your ideas! Stay at home moms or otherwise...we're all in this together and we all feel the same things! Keep your chin up, commit to something that is bigger than yourself, and I guarantee you it will make ya feel better!