Colby and Ellen

I’ve been on a journey the last maybe three weeks or so where I feel like I have closely identified with the Psalmist.  Reading through Psalms, you find so many chapters that begin almost in lament or “Why?!” “How long?” or expressing discontent and by the time you get to the end of the chapter, he is praising God for victory and for who He is!

So many times over these last few weeks, I’ve been comforted by the words of 2 Corinthians 4:8-9.  ”We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”  Let me explain…

Judah was scheduled to have a procedure done in the “Cath lab” to close one of the holes (his PDA) in his heart on September 26th.  Although this is a relatively “simple” procedure (on a heart anyhow!) and he will only have to be in the hospital for one night, it was still a major stress point for mommy and daddy!  I’ve had nightmares about watching the OR doors close behind Judah with me on the other side since I was pregnant with him and knew some type of surgery would be in his future.

A couple weeks ago, I found out that a TON of hospitals in the Bay Area chose this time frame to go on strike!  This included Children’s Hospital and also the hospital where I work (which didn’t effect me work wise because my department is non-union).  But this meant the idea of “travelers” that were not familiar with the area/hospital would be taking care of my sweet boy!  This made me very nervous, but I have a friend who works at CHO who volunteered to cross picket lines to take care of him- crisis averted!  I called our Cardiologist just to make sure it would not be better just to reschedule (which we did end up doing for tomorrow, September 27, once the strike is over) and left word for him to call me back.  When I got a call back from him, I was surprised to hear that he wasn’t specifically calling to talk about Judah’s surgery, but rather the results of a test called a Holter monitor (a box that Judah wears that records his heart rhythms for 24 hours).  He was calling to say that he saw periods of what they call Complete Heart block where the “electrical work” of the heart is not properly working so the atrium and ventricles beat off sync with one another.  He explained that although Judah’s did not look serious now, it was a possibility for him to need a pacemaker when he’s a big boy and closer, long term monitoring of his heart rhythms.  Wow, what a blow.  I was sitting in our office at work and had such a hard time being brave and fighting off tears.  Although it wasn’t dangerous now…it was something else!

Later that week, I was trying to get all my paperwork ready for my maternity leave and got some really disappointing news from Human Resources.  Since my maternity leaves are so close together, I am short 35 hours for being eligible for extra bonding time off from work after my medical recovery from my c-section.  So while I was expecting close to 4 months off work to get our crazy new life settled, it looks like I’ll have to be settling for about 2 months instead!  Also, part of this will likely be totally unpaid leave and they’ve changed policies so the rest will be 2/3 of my salary instead of 100% like I had with Judah.  Again, sitting in the office at work, I couldn’t hold back the tears on this one!  I have to admit that I’m pretty terrified about the difficulty level of this transition and feel so sad for Colby having to “go solo” so soon in the game.

Lastly, everything in my pregnancy with Eden so far has been textbook perfect…something we have not taken for granted and have been SO thankful for!  The last week or so, though, I’ve noticed that I’ve started itching…all over!!! At first it started out as occasional on my back and I could pretty easily ignore it, but as time went on, it’s moved on to my arms, legs, face…everywhere!  I was thankful to have an OB check up appointment today as the itching is worse than ever today!  After talking with her, my fear was confirmed…she thinks that there is a good chance I’m developing something called cholestasis.  Simply put, it is a liver problem that causes you to have a high level of bile salts in your blood stream that cause you to itch.  This can also put me and Eden at higher risk for a stillbirth.  I had some lab work done to confirm one way or the other if this is what we are dealing with and should know by the end of the week.  If the labs come back positive for cholestasis, then I’ll have to begin going to testing twice a week to make sure Eden is doing ok in there and likely deliver a week (maybe two) earlier than planned or if she were in distress, of course.  If the itching gets really bad, then there is a medication I can take to help alleviate some of the discomfort.

Throughout all of this, I’ll have to admit that I’ve said to the Lord a time or two, “How much more do you think we can take?!”  And the 2 Corinthians verse came to mind every, single time.  What a relief to know that we can be stretched to the max, but God would never crush us, destroy us, allow us to suffer in the depths of despair or abandon us!  And how have we seen this play out in our everyday life?  The Body of Christ coming alongside us and helping carry the burden when we just cannot even pretend to put up a front of “being ok” with all of this.  Several of our sweet friends, Caitlin and Stephen as well as Sarah have insisted on sharing the responsibility of bringing us meals the first whole week after Judah’s surgery!!!  It is sometimes hard to humble yourself to accept gifts and acknowledge that you don’t have it all perfectly together, but it will be so nice to have one less thing to be concerned with (even though they say Judah will be totally recovered by day two, I may be in a corner somewhere scratching to death !!!!)  Knowing that people around us who have heard each step of the way all our challenges are praying for our strength to take one day at a time is worth more than gold at this point.  Also, this week on September 22nd, Colby and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary.  Another one of our dear friends, Deanne, volunteered to watch Judah so we could go out to dinner and it was such a blessing to look back over the last four years and see the Faithful Hand of the Father in our family’s life.  We both agreed that, while we would have never chosen the road we’ve been down, the closeness to one another and the Lord that it has brought are a treasure that many may never experience!  Just four years in and we’ve already covered a lot of the “better and worse” parts in our vows!  I must say that I feel like I’m truly in a place where I have to trust in the Lord for each day- one at a time!!!- because tomorrow and the next day seem to hold uncertainty and too much to handle…and besides, who by worrying has added a single hour to his life?  We are being refined like silver in the fire of many trials, but we are also being molded more into who He is calling us to be during that process!  So here I am, at the end of my lament and “How long?!” rant, being thankful for our endless blessings and all I can do is resound with the Psalmist when he says over and over again, “Praise the LORD!”