Wednesday, April 29, 2015

When you move too many heavy boxes with your tongue



It's been a rougher and less productive week than I could wish for.


I've been pushing through heavy fatigue for weeks, packing and then unpacking, living on Advil and carryout.


I started with one Advil.  By moving day I was up to two, and my big toes went numb.


Ok, I was on my feet a lot, basically getting an intense workout.  After a few days I'll be fine.


Last week I bumped up to three, and the numbness spread to my whole feet, and my hands....and my tongue.


This is a bit less simple to explain.


Not only was I sore all over with a painful back and jaw and headache, but then I lost strength in my arms and legs.  It became difficult to lift my arms or balance on one foot.  And the numbness wasn't going away, despite me not unpacking or doing any heavy lifting since last Thursday.


By Monday I was desperately praying for a same-day appointment with a doctor, which I got, but it was immensely discouraging with no good solution.  Tuesday I found another doctor who would see me for a second opinion.


After hearing my symptoms, he said, "That's weird."


Not what you hope to hear from your doctor.


However, after an exam he did rule out the likelihood of anything serious, like multiple sclerosis, which WebMD said I have.  


He decided on a working hypothesis that I overdid it in the move and caused a bunch of muscle inflammation, which in turn is causing various pinched nerves, resulting in sensations of numbness and weakness.  He offered a steroid prescription which I practically snatched out of his hand, in the hope that it will bring down the inflammation and the rest will resolve itself.


So it hasn't been the blissfully creative week of decorating my new home that it might have been, had I not been so busy writhing and panicking.


I drove to the doctor on Monday with stiff back and numb hands, weeping at the wheel, wondering what I've done to myself.


It struck me that--aside from the legitimate reasons like wanting a well-ordered home--one reason I pushed myself so hard is that driving voice in my head that persistently tells me I'm not good enough.  Never good enough.  Not doing it right.  My house is a mess--I'm feeding the kids pizza again--boxes in the living room:  not good enough.  Children not marching in a line, jumping at my every direction: not good enough.  Not simultaneously cooking from scratch, maintaining spotlessness and tight discipline, and volunteering in a soup kitchen:  not good enough.


No wonder I'm neurotic.


We had an interesting discussion in a Bible study I was in some months ago on Romans, when one lady said that she never had a strong sense of guilt or personal sin, so the gospel was hard for her to appreciate.  I realized, and said, that I was thankful to have always had quite a strong sense of my guilt.  The gospel is for people like me.


As I'm driving along, thinking of how listening to that hateful voice has helped to drive me into disability, Matt Maher's song Because He Lives came on.


I was dead in the grave
I was covered in sin and shame


This is me without Christ.  Dead, in the grave.  Covered with the shame of never-good-enough.  Imprisoned by it.  Hopeless.


I heard mercy call my name
He rolled the stone away!


This is the good news for me!  He rolled away the stone keeping me in that grave.  No accusation of insufficiency, however true, had the power to hold me there when Jesus called me out.  


I'm alive, I'm alive
Because He lives

Because He lives
I can face tomorrow
Because He lives
Every fear is gone
I know He holds my life, my future in His hands


Sweet mercy.  Precious promise.  Such good, good news.  The tyranny of that voice is gone and I am free, because He lives.





 

Friday, April 24, 2015

Announcing our new arrival



Moving reminds me a lot of having a baby.  It's exhausting, hard work coming to fruition, and afterwards the house is in a state of chaos and I'm in pain all over.


Like childbirth, I thought the packing would never end.

 


Unexpected help showed up Friday (the day before moving day), and a surprising amount of stuff got moved.




The color-code directory.






These signs enabled my whole kitchen to get unpacked by lunchtime Saturday, and not by me.




The night before the official move:




Discovering the sunrise view from our bathroom early on moving day:










The playroom got set up and running right away.






And eventually my spices.  It's the little things.




The landscaping isn't done yet--we don't have grass--so we still get to see Grandpa working.




Caleb's a big help unpacking too.




I unpacked the garage last, and made designated parking spaces for the kids' bikes.


Caleb understood very clearly which one was his.




After unpacking and setting up the entire house, including the garage, I figured I earned a moment to sit down and blog.


Also we just got internet.




Still clear on which one is Caleb's.





Thursday, April 16, 2015

T minus 2 days



I discovered today that I've arrived.


....at something.


My mother grew up in a family of eight kids in a small house--small as in, she shared a room full of bunk beds with her five brothers and someone had to sit in the windowsill when the whole family gathered around the table.


Long before the days of carseats or even seatbelts, the family travelled in a mere station wagon, shifting to fill in the space if a child was ever left, say, at a gas station (hypothetically).


My Grandpa was notorious for forgetting the names of his children, or even how many he had.


The family was full of love, however, and even managed to eke out vacations with extended family.


On one occasion, the kids' uncle, who was a Catholic priest, was driving the car full of kids when they stopped for a potty break.  As the door opened and the kids started pouring out, one after another, the gas station attendant's jaw dropped and he looked at the priest and drawled, "Gee, Mistah...Is all them yours?"


We'll miss our cherry trees.




I gave up on school this week, what with the last-minute house finishing and the packing of massive amounts of stuff.


Instead, we've been having lots of together time:  packing,




running load after load of donations to the Salvation Army, packing,




getting groceries to tide us over til the move,




and packing.




Since all our food is packed up




I took the kids out to Hardee's this morning (breakfast of champions, right there).


And while I was there with them, an older gentleman who had been playing peek-a-boo with Caleb finally came over and said to me, "Is all them yours?"


It's the circle of life.




Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Of fallenness and beauty



I identified wholeheartedly with my brother's last post about his sweet baby's eczema.


I, too, marveled at the perfection of my newborns, including their beautiful baby-soft skin.  So when the angry red rash reared its ugly, itchy head, marring their perfect complexion, it was most distressing to me too.  I struggled to accept this flaw on *my perfect baby*.


In other words, I struggled to accept that *my* children are also fallen.


(This becomes easier to believe when they approach age two.)


Seeing the damaging effects of the Fall in your own life is bad enough, or in the world in general, but seeing your own child suffer and their beauty distorted is heart-rending.


Indeed,


Whatever issues our child faces, will never ultimately be resolved in this life.  Our greatest need is the resurrection--new life, new hearts, new bodies, and redeemed souls...Whether our baby lives his whole life without any skin blemishes or not, he desperately needs the hope of the resurrection--the surety that the old will be made new.


Saturday, however, found me contemplating not the effects of the Fall, but a beautiful life.  My first-ever experience as a Little League mom turned out to be more enjoyable than I expected.












Lizzy and Caleb heartily enjoyed rollicking in the grass, eating hot dogs, and playing in a big dirt pile with the other little siblings they befriended.


Jeddy had a great time.  The setting was beautiful.


Somewhere around the third inning I walked over to the new house and let myself in to use the bathroom.  It was a quiet haven from the cheerful public activity outside.  I breathed in that new house smell.  Then I stepped back out the door into the park, passing the flapping flag on the way to the ball field and thought, "Life just can't get any better than this."




C. S. Lewis wrote of our appreciation of beauty and goodness and the massive desire in all our hearts to know ultimate beauty:


Earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage.









Friday, April 10, 2015

Sunday, April 5, 2015

The ugly truth



Packing to move isn't very photogenic.


Case in point:






Yikes.


I did find some interesting items when going through Jeddy's old schoolwork that brightened the task.


Biology lessons:


"Bumblebee"


"Blood Cells Eating Germs"


Creative writing:




Biblical history:


"The Walls of Jericho Falling Down"


Poetry:




Letter writing:


"Dear Jason, Thank you, Daddy, for working so hard! ~Jeddy"


"Dear Daddy, Thank you, Daddy, for working so hard! ~Jeddy"


This one's particularly relevant this month:


"Dear Daddy, Thank you for paying taxes. I love you. (It was copied) Love, Jeddy"


Second grade Cliffs Notes on the classics:


"Romeo and Juliet were in love.  In the end, Romeo and Juliet killed themselves and Capulet and Montague made up."


That about covers it.


Days later:








The goal in sight:




Caleb joins in the packing effort:





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