Come Over Let's Putter - A Hindsight Moment

This picture is from 2005 when I was younger, smarter and my body was sturdier. Now that I have a  "REAL" job I have a flabby bottom from sitting at a computer all day. Back then I could swing a kid or two up on my hip, wipe a nose, make a sandwich, change a diaper, do the laundry, and have dinner ready to go at five o'clock. I was a lactating super-machine, milk on the move (it has been a while since I have blogged and getting that narcissistic talk about myself out there feels really good, but enough is enough). 

That there is our precious Grammy, she looks great and just the same today as yesterday. I think she may just live forever. I gave her a call the other day. "Hey, whatcha you doing?" I asked. She gave me the usual lovely oration about what her day of sitting in her assisted living suite would look like. She would stare out the window, predict the wind pattern based on the way the flag in the court yard blew, pass out in her chair only to be woken up by a med tech for her diabetic injection and then sashay her way down the hall for lunch. My listening ear on the other end of the phone caused something inside me to happen and it came from way down deep, up to my throat, it was not gurgling or bothersome but whimsical and sweet, WORDS, they were kind words right there in my mouth and out my lips..."It is Saturday, and I am just going to be puttering around the house, do you want to come hang out with me?" Her response was like machine gun rapid fire, HOW SOON CAN YOU GET HERE!

Hurray! Salvation was coming to save Grammy from the retirement home, it was me, coming to save her day and make her happy. A glorious idea filled my head and it was then that I was determined that I would make her the best dinner ever. A dinner that she truly deserved, the same dependable Sunday dinner that she used to make for us when we were growing up: roast beef, real mashed potatoes with butter resting on top, beautiful brown gravy to flow over those fluffy mounds, cottage cheese and peaches, salad and dinner rolls and a sugar free fruit pie with ice cream for dessert.The best down home southern comfort food my Grandma has seen in some time!

Our Saturday puttering was great and the dinner was turning out spectacularly. The table was set so pretty and like an innocent lamb kicking up her heels on the way to the slaughter, I gleefully whipped up those potatoes and tossed that salad not even knowing that my dinner may just be the end of Grammy, that she might meet her Maker right there at my dinner table...

stay tuned from my next Hindsight Moment - Why Retirement Homes Don't Serve Roast Beef.

Then came Psalm 26

Sometimes on this blog I have shared my Christian faith and most of the time I have not. My posts are mainly just the stories and hindsight aha moments that I have after something in life has happened. Yesterday morning I woke up with my mind and heart in the thick of things and stuck. Stuck with not knowing what was going to happen to Cade and knowing that the morning would begin with me going to a real job and having to maneuver all the medical happenings over the phone.

The four people who occupy my office space seldom say much but they do hear all of my conversations with the four doctors' offices, two hospitals, and of course the two insurance companies I deal with. They probably know more than they ever wanted to know about uveitis and psoriasis and yet they are there in the same space living and doing the work we do. God is there too listening and working, working out the things that I can't forecast and see down the road and honestly even the things I can't see in the present. That is what I mean by being stuck. Stuck in the circumstance that the situation sucks, wanting to trust God but being disappointed at each turn in the road...

...and there it is in Psalm 26, maybe I noticed it because the word walk was used. I have been walking a lot lately. I can no longer drive because of the herniated disc in my back and the aching sciatica down my leg. Sitting hurts so I stand at my desk with my computer monitors stacked on paper boxes and when I have a meeting at another building on my company's campus I walk. A quarter mile or so I walk along worn out roads, beneath canopies of sycamore trees and in the solitude of it all I noticed for the first time in a long while that I am really in God's house. He is there with me all the time, when things are going well and when they are not. The reality is that I occupy God's space all the time. It really is less about me and more about Him and in my cry, right along with the writer of Psalm 25 and the countless others that turn there when they are in need I discover that I am made new. Made new to notice that I am in God's house, in His presence and He is God and I am not.

A Soul Lifted Up - Psalm 25

About thirteen years ago God made me a momma and something happened to my heart. It melted for a sweet little cone head shaped boy born a few weeks early but definitely a fighter. On that day my heart changed and I got a Momma's Heart. One that loves, wipes up messes, uses lots of words for all those teaching moments, and goes to bat for my baby.

Yesterday, was one of the worst days yet  in dealing with insurance and getting medicine for Cade. There are so many details about our medical system that would shock those who hardly have to use it and would just confirm and cause the heads of those who are sick or know someone who is sick to nod up and down. 

This morning I am camped out in Psalm 25 hurt and seeking guidance, healing, and forgiveness for how I feel about the people on the other end of the phone that I talk to. My prayer is that I can trust God to take care of the details, that the blurriness and redness in Cade's eyes doesn't lead to blindness, that I can begin to understand why the drugs that are sitting at the pharmacy one mile away can't be given to my child because my insurance says they have to come from their specialty pharmacy in California and why that wasn't mentioned last Friday when he should have had the medicine. The words in Psalm 25 say what I need today...that my soul really needs God's help.

In My Mother's Closet: and then she turned 95 - getting ready

So I have been up to something... some other blog things...I really don't recommend doing two blogs at once...it almost seems like I am having an affair on my first blog and honestly my heart belongs to Hindsight.  The second blog is really self explanatory and is a gift to my extended family and a way to honor my mom. It is also a way to help my eldest sister, Selina, clean out her garage that is crammed full of all the family history. 

I have decided that there are way to many responsibilities with being the first born in a family and that being the baby, the last born really does rule. My sisters would all agree that I can be a little bossy, okay maybe a lot bossy (they even gave me a small tiara once, maybe to suggest that I thought I was the queen of England or something). Recently, the months of March through May brought a whole lot of coordinating (and taking charge) to celebrate my Grandma turning 95. Most who follow this blog know how much I love my Grammy and 95 is something to celebrate. Truly, I think she was just as shocked as the rest of us that she has made it this far. The post about her party is linked below  and will help transition into my next few posts.

In My Mother's Closet: and then she turned 95 - getting ready: "A lot of coordinating went into celebrating Lou's 95th birthday party and our beautiful Baker and Galloway family pulled it off to make her..."

Cleaning Up the Back Log

It has been a while since I have opened up this blog and let my fingers do the talking. There has been so much going on that I now have a back log of pictures (this picture has nothing to do with the post, I just liked it) and hindsight moments to share. My last post I think was in January, when we took our visit to Seattle for Cade's appointment where he received another disease diagnosis of psoriasis in conjunction with the Uveitis. Our (mine and craig's) parent hearts hurt for our son as we see this disease ravage his body from head to toe. Today is a new day, we try a new drug that may help treat (i am root-root-rooting for a cure) both diseases. In either case our trust is fully in God, who has faithfully carried us through the fun and crazy moments and the hard times. 

I would also like to say that it was with God's help that I did not rip the phone out of the wall on numerous occasions while talking to our insurance provider to help pay for Cade's treatment but honestly in my heart and sometimes with my mouth I was hating the people on the other end of the telephone line thus my predicament was asking for God to help me not be a hater and in the end everything financially has been provided for. On a side-note I am still working on the hating and bitterness part.

In the next few weeks I will have back surgery. My sedentary, lack of exercise, cupcake, cheese and wine loving life style has not served me well this past year and in March a slippery disc in my lower back decided to have an up close and personal relationship with one of my nerves, thus I have a new word that blurts out of my mouth in agony, SCIATICA. I'll have some time on my hands after surgery to write, which is both therapy and something I love.