Be the tree, grasshopper

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I think God is trying to tell me something, and maybe I am hard of hearing.

Because today = mentally exhausting.

Tyler's tumor appears to be growing, so we pack up and head to the hospital for a new scan. Tyler begins to cry as soon as we put him in his wheelchair. I think he knows where we are going and he doesn't like it one bit. My oldest daughter comes with me this time since my mom's back is out.

Good thing, too. Tyler throws up five times today and she is indispensable.

Although they interact as siblings - my kids don't normally have anything to do with Ty's personal care needs - I think they need to have a regular childhood - well, as much as possible anyway.

But, lately, she (my oldest girl) has been asking to help with his tube feedings and watches us do his port care and administer IV medicine doses. She also saved the day when Ty called it quits on the way home from the library, so I knew she was up for it.

At Radiology, the staff loves her and they even let her run the CT Scan, pushing buttons to record the latest tumor growth. The head radiologist tells her to come back in 7 years so she can take over the tech's job. She is a regular little nurse.

I know there is something going on with Ty, and it is a little bit scary. He is sweating buckets and doing his version of a moose call - at least that's what it sounds like when you yell at your mom and your voice is changing.

When we arrive at clinic, an infant is in respiratory distress. Nurses are running back and forth the way they do when a patient, an infant, is teetering on the high wire between life here and that other place - with nasal canullas, some sort of 'stat' cart and the smallest backboard I've ever seen. He is sent to the PICU for angels to watch over.

Later one of the nurses talks with her about how she enjoys seeing kids and getting to know them. She tells her that a lot of them get better, although lately (I stop her before she talks about death)...not so much. The doctor comes in, listens to Ty's lungs for a long time and then mentions that there's a backlog in Radiology - so no scan results today.

I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I do not like this "waiting for the other shoe to drop" business. I stink at it. We give Ty something to help with the nausea and go home.

Home. My ears are tired and worn out from too much hospital noise, too many moose calls, and too much pecking from kids needing me as soon as I step in the door.

I step outside, the kids following me still - peck, peck, pecking at my ears. I wander in the garden, breathing in earthy scents and pulling at bits of weeds. Therapy.

One by one, the children leave, go inside, as the wind picks up. The thunder rolls in from across the lake. I lay in the grass under the trees, my back pressing into the cool softness, and study the sky. Black clouds advance, tossing the tree tops like so many peacock feathers, branches bending low to scrape the grass. They thrash about - the leaves whip, whip, whipping at the sky. I inhale, deeply. Amidst all this turmoil I notice something.

I notice that the trunk stands firm, rooted to the earth, while the branches sway with the wind, carving light and air rhythmically to music only the trees hear. The trunk, branches, and leaves, one undulating form harvesting strength from the violent forces of nature.

People are not so different from trees.

I listen, and the wind whispers........

......... flexibility

.................... strength

...............................peace.

Like a streak of lightning

They say Time + Crisis = Humor. I think "they" got it partially wrong.
It should really read: Time + Disaster Averted = Humor. Like Thursday, for instance. I had my two cute nephews from Maryland visiting me.

Blond-haired and blue-eyed, they are 3 and nearly 5 years old. They look up at you and say funny things like, "You worry too much," when you caution them not to lean too far over the deep end of the pool.

They had been playing outside with Speilberg for a while, and I thought I'd peek my head out the back door and see how things were going. At just that moment, he decided to show the nearly 5 year old how his air-soft gun works. They were across the yard.

Speilberg was explaining things and then he pointed the gun away from them (like we've taught him) and took a shot. Mind you, all this is taking place in slow motion and instantaneously. I see this white ball, surprisingly small yet looming impossibly large at the same time, come hurtling through the air and right at.my.eye.

Zchping! It smacked right into the inner corner of my left eye.

Here is where I tell you that maybe my S.M.A.R.T. Habit this Saturday should be to mind my P's and Q's a little better. I used to have a tiny (okay, maybe a wee bit bigger than tiny) problem with my language. While I wasn't ever exactly a sailor mouth, a colorful word or two (or maybe too many to count)has been known to cross my lips in a moment of frustration or you know, potentially life or limb threatening situations. Shocking, I know. Or maybe not so much, I do have definite limitations.

Thankfully, I've since reformed(mostly, there are still those periodic life-threatening situations). But Thursday, when that white ball of fury shot out of the sky like a streak of lightning and smacked me in the eye, I have to admit my reaction was a bit lacking in class.

Out of shear surprise, and in shock but of course, not anger, I screamed, "You shot me in the eye, da**it! You shot me in the EYE!" Did you believe the "not anger" part? My eye is a limb I have become very attached to and it was definitely feeling threatened.

Those words that you may have used in order to sound cool when you were a teen have a way of dropping in for a visit, unannounced. A sort of potty-mouth flashback and only when all the kids are there to hear it, and maybe some of the neighbor's kids too. I never thought about it, it just slipped out. I'm sure the neighbors were thinking, "Here we go. She's finally lost it."

Luckily, it hit me on the inside edge of my tear duct and only just left a scrape on the inner part of my eye. My son came running in from the yard crying, "I didn't mean to," and thinking he had blinded me. It hurt like a, well like a match had been put out in my eye. I kept my hand over my eye and let Speilberg think the worst for the moment. He ran into his room feeling terrible. I ran for the bathroom mirror to check if I could still see and to assess the damage.

Speilberg came to the door while it was closed and begged to talk to me. I let him know that I was okay and then we talked about accidents and how no one means for them to happen, but they still do. And that is why we have to be so careful with guns, even air-soft ones. (His are taking a break in the cupboard).

It was all a fluke, a freak of bad timing, but now he knows to only take shots when and where he is aiming and to shoot only when everyone is suited up with the proper eye wear. Because it only takes once to feel horrible about something for the rest of your life.

Getting back to the humor part, my sister and I were laughing about it tonight. Swearing in front of the kids isn't the worst thing that can happen (or the greatest). I suppose we got a little irreverent about it. She was saying that up in heaven they were throwing "one more thing" - potential blindness - my way to see if I could still do it - this life here on earth thing.

It was funny at the time, and humor gets us through a lot of hard things, like having sick children and your own personal medical issues. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it sounded like we were saying that God gives us trials to see how much it will take to break us, for us to give up. But He's not like that at all. These trials that come our way are just a part of being human, and He isn't up there waiting or hoping for us to fail. He's right here with us, rooting for our succcess, and thinking, "I knew you could do it."

Truth be told, I felt blessed and protected. That ball hit me so hard that if it had been a little more to the left, I may have actually received a serious eye injury. So thank you, Lord, for giving me perspective. Things are pretty great around here even if they are a tad too adventurous!