Gratitude

I am grateful for the chance to learn new talents.

I am grateful for new adventures (today, my first-ever winter bike ride into town with my husband).

I am grateful for dazzling blue-sky winter days where the cold is invigorating, not exhausting.

I am grateful for energy. With the exception of the past few days when I haven't been sleeping well, I've had more energy in the last few weeks than I've had in quite some time. We think it must be another great result from the TOBI. I have gotten more done in the last two or three weeks than I have in a long time—and boy, it feels good.

I am grateful for clothes that reflect my mood.

I am grateful for personal devotional time.

I am grateful for doctors who put me on such a mega dose of Vitamin D that I have had not one hint of SAD this winter.

I am grateful for audiobooks . . . to listen to while I am cleaning, or while I'm snuggling with my husband!

I am grateful for a husband to snuggle with.

I am grateful for bookshelves to hold all my books! (I'll have to blog about those soon.)

I am grateful that the winter Olympics are starting this week . . . awesome!

I am grateful for this life.

Living by Faith

The last two weeks have been a little crazy. In the last two weeks:

1. I had a major allergic reaction
2. Mahon lost his job
3. Our car broke down.

With the exception of a few hours here and there, they actually have been great weeks. But they haven't left much time—or much mental energy—for blogging.

But the one thing they have had is ample opportunity to think about faith. My faith.

I am learning (slowly) to depend entirely on God. To rely wholly and completely on him for everything—for my very support. Only a week and a half before the car broke down, we received an extra sum of money from my disability payment: enough to cover the car repairs (once we actually get the car into the mechanic, anyway).

He provides for us, always. I just have to learn to have enough faith to realize that—before I have my usual emotional freak-out.

Wonder

This is what I walked out to the other day:

There are some moments that just take my breath away with their beauty.

This was one of them.

Mysterious Ways

The last week has been a strange one. Beginning with my spectacular allergic reaction: ending with a series of stressful events that culminated with Mahon stepping down from his job as office manager of our apartment complex.

Friday evening, I wasn't sure how any of the things that had happened that day could resolve in a positive way. By the time I woke up on Saturday morning, I was feeling so overwhelmed with the love of God that I couldn't stop smiling.

It's funny, the way life works out sometimes. It's funny, the way the Lord can take what seems like the most terrible of circumstances and turn it around to work for our good.

All of this is a cryptic and long-winded way of saying that the last few days have been days of great change in my life: but also days of great joy.

The Lord certainly does work in mysterious ways.

Itch

I once again look like a red-spotted leopard.

I've spent yesterday and today in a medically-induced stupor (sometimes a full-blown coma!).

I have Angelina Jolie lips—red and puffy. Only I didn't even have to get collagen implants.

Yes, you guessed it. For the billionth (okay, the fourth or fifth—I lost count) time this year, I am having an allergic reaction to an antibiotic. This time, it's a reaction to an oral antibiotic, and in the relative comfort of my own home. So here I am: taking large doses of benadryl, applying hydrocortisone cream like it's going out of style, and taking lukewarm oatmeal baths.

Hopefully I'll be back before too long—spot free and fully cognizant once more.

Dear Baby,

(Thanks, Devin, for the endless supply of pictures that I can use when I post about motherhood!)

You've been on my mind again lately. Yesterday, I thought I had a handle on this "waiting" thing—but tonight, surrounded by newborn babies and listening to a friend talk about the early stages of her pregnancy, I wanted you so badly that it brought tears to my eyes.

Sometimes I feel like a traitor to the life that I have now. Because I love it, I really do. I love all this time to be a wife, to be alone with my husband, to learn to love him more each day and grow stronger in our marriage. I am truly happy—truly content—with this place I'm at. But still: I cannot deny that my arms ache for you every time I see mothers with their new babies. My body aches for you every time I see women with their hands on rounded bellies.

Your dad calls it "mothersick." Like homesick, for motherhood. And he is "fathersick." We both wish so deeply to be able to meet you, to bring you into our family, to create new life with you.

I have to remind myself often why I am waiting. The truth is, I am doing it for you. Because I want the best for you. Because I want you to have a mother to raise you, a mother to watch you take your first steps and learn to ride your first bike and graduate from high school and have children of your own. Even more than I want you to be in my life right now, I want to be there for your life at every stage. And because of that, I wait. I wait so that we will both have the best chance at health, so that you will have a mother for as long as you need one.

And so on nights like this, when the emptiness in my arms seems like too much to bear, I will remind myself of that fact.

I wait because I love you.

Love,
Mom

This Day

"Nothing is worth more than this day." -Goethe

This day was an up-and-down day: a work, sleep, eat, crochet, laugh, cry, eat chocolate day. There was cleaning, and errands, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets audiobook and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me podcast.

There were moments spent watching the snow fall, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, outside my window.

This week I have been reading in the book of Jacob, the parable of the olive tree. As I read this time, a new interpretation struck me: myself as the lord of the vineyard, my life as the vineyard itself. In particular, Jacob 5:47-48 spoke to me. In these verses, the lord of the vineyard discovers that the branches of one of his olive trees have outgrown the roots—the roots of the tree are still good, but there are too many branches. As a result, the tree is producing "evil fruit."

That, I thought, is a good representation of how my life gets sometimes. Top-heavy. Overcrowded. Sometimes, I let my schedule overrun the strength of my roots. In these times, no matter what else I am doing for the health of my tree, I can only bring forth evil fruit.

If you have read my blog for long, you will know that I have a cycle: I get bored, I work really hard, I get exhausted, I spend some time crying and bemoaning my uselessness. This evening, as I was running through this cycle again, I found myself thinking: It's like being stuck on a hamster wheel. No matter what I do, I keep coming back to the same places.

With equal clarity, the solution came to me. Get off the hamster wheel, then.

Sometimes, it is that simple.

And always, I must remember: nothing is worth more than this day. The good parts, the hard parts, the learning parts, the chocolate-eating parts.

This day has been many things—but it, and every day, is precious.

After finishing a project this afternoon, I lost my crochet hook.

I found it a little while later.

In the bathroom.

???

(No, I don't crochet in the bathroom. Though I do read.)

The Lord Is Good

A dear friend e-mailed me tonight and mentioned that she'd been checking my blog all week to find out whether or not I was in the hospital.

Um, oops. Sorry about that.

It's been a crazy week: a day of flying, a day spent half at the doctor in Salt Lake and half on the shuttle back to Rexburg (with a brief interim at the Temple Square visitors center—an experience I hope to blog about soon), and successive days spent delighting in the fact that I'm back with my husband and sleeping twelve to fourteen cumulative hours a day.

No, I am not in the hospital. The Lord is good. A week and a half ago I didn't think there was any way I would be able to avoid another trip; my best hope was to postpone it for a month. A few days later, however, I woke to find that overnight my sputum had gone from army-green to crystal clear (sorry if that's TMI for those of you without CF; personally, my life revolves around spit)—a sure sign that the infection was on the way out, and, by the way, something that never happens to me. I think it has to be because I was, at the time, trying out an inhaled antibiotic that I usually don't use. I usually don't use it because it usually has no effect. Well, my friends, I would call the little miracle that has occurred in the last two weeks a BIG effect! It's almost enough to make me stop complaining about the constant bad taste in my mouth this antibiotic creates . . . almost.

Wednesday at clinic my lung function was down from where it was when I was discharged from the hospital in November, but it wasn't down ten percent—the point at which they throw you in the club. Now I am back home and actually sleeping through the night again (something that until a few nights ago was patently impossible), and beginning to hope that I might actually meet my goal of being out of the hospital for more than three months.

This week's silence is due in part to the fact that I've been in full-blown rest-and-recovery mode, and due in part (this is embarrassing) to the fact that both of my cameras need to have their batteries charged, which means that I haven't been taking many pictures. This blog is not, as some would claim, a photo blog—but I'm so enthralled by the marriage of words and images that I have a hard time bringing myself to post if I can't find a suitable picture to go along with it.

(The photo above was taken this time last year, in case you were wondering.)

Tomorrow, I'll make sure to charge my batteries.

Sunsetting

I sit in the Phoenix airport surrounded by windows, and watch the slow sunset.

First it is bluesky, and the gold reflection of the sun is catching on the window-glass and shining in my eyes. It is that blinding gold of just-before-dusk: the last burn of the sun before it gracefully concedes to the hills and goes to warm the other half of the planet.

Next it is pink-and-gold, the first blush of evening, illuminating the planes and cranes on the tarmac outside the windows and making all these ordinary things extraordinary. If I hadn't given the batteries in my camera to my mom before leaving North Carolina, I would take a picture. But I did give them to her, and so instead I just watch.

I watch as the pink deepens, flushes into orange and purple and finally, finally, red. And slowly, so slowly that I hardly notice it, the red gives way to indigo and then black, and the lights of the terminal opposite us wink into yellow-orange life. Day to night, smooth as silk.

Sunday evening I drove the kids home from church, through the January-bare woods of North Carolina, and watched as the golden kiss of the sunlight climbed further and further up the trees. The landscape was bathed in rich light that faded slowly, so slowly, with a peacefulness and a restfulness that spoke deep to my soul. I drove along the winding roads and watched that light, and when I pulled into my parents' driveway I was calm, and happy.

This morning I woke up to a wonderful surprise. In the night, several of my more worrying respiratory symptoms—those most indicative of serious infection—had lessened to an astonishing degree. This never happens. Full-blown, keep-you-up-all-night lung infections just don't spontaneously go away. The only thing I can think is that a medication I've been on for a few weeks—one that has never been effective in the past, but that I've been trying anyway just to see—has been strong enough, this month, to really help. For the first time all week, it actually seems possible that tomorrow's doctor visit won't earn me an immediate pass to Club Med.

Miracles happen all the time, in our every day lives.

Sunsets and modern medicine are only two of them.

We only have to be willing to learn to see them.