Valentines

It is funny to watch these commercials on television for Valentines Day and the ideals of dating, romantic dinners, candles, intimacy, and ooy-gooy moments between men and women. Then there is reality. In our home, our Valentines consisted of combating Jacob’s 105.8 fever that resulted from the flu. We were cleaning up Macayla’s feeding tube site from cauterizing it the previous day with silver nitrate. We had bloody stomachs and yellow snot. Our romantic dinner (which was steak) was eaten quickly on a table half covered in paperwork and prescription medicines. Instead of candles, roses, and whispering sweet nothings, we had thermometers, Kleenex, and the honking of snot-filled nostrils. I have yet to see any marketing for Valentines that reflects this scenario. Companies like Kleenex, Therma Scan, and Motrin should explore marketing their products on higher concepts of love. Maybe it is in these scenarios that we begin to discover love more appropriately. It is easy to love in the ideal world of television fantasy where everyone is free of faults, flaws and trials. We live in a culture that claims true love is known only when it is a felt emotion. True love is known but not always a felt emotion. Emotions come and go, but knowledge remains. Maybe true love is discovered when we love in spite of its cost or benefit. Maybe true love is discovered in the faults, flaws and trials. I pray my knowledge of love grows this year because as I am typing there is a little nose that needs blowing, again. I honestly cannot claim that the emotion I have right now is ooy-gooy love. The only ooy-gooy I feel is in the tissue. So, I pray most of all that those around me know I love them with more than passing emotion.

Wheels!

Macayla has new wheels! She just got a new wheelchair made by Ormesa. It is company in Italy that seems to be making some good products. Her chair has been thought out for daily use. It actually has a sun visor and rain cover. These seem to be absent on other brands we have shopped. The rain cover is always on the chair if the visor is attached and it covers all of Macayla and the chair. There is also a thermal cover that zips up around Macayla to keep her warm. The chair looks similar to a big stroller and is much more comfortable than her other chair. We are still learning the best ways to use the chair, but overall it is a vast improvement over our last chair. 

Our other wheels (the van) is back from the car doctor. The ignition coil and coil wire was bad and had to be replaced. This is the part that is responsible for making all the spark plugs fire in the proper sequence. We came out of that procedure with a lot less damage than we anticipated. Still, I would like to see these presidential candidates promote a universal car care program! I'd love to only have to pay a copay when the cars are repaired.

Update

Macayla’s feeding tube has done better overall, but we are still experiencing granulation that never seems to stop. She still gets blood in her stomach from time to time but we have not seen the levels of blood that we did before December. She is still tolerating food well and even put on some needed weight. Our hope is that we will not end up where we were last summer. She just does not tolerate foreign objects in her tummy. Maybe that’s a good thing if she were ever to be a teenager. It might have prevented her from being big into body piercing! But I wish she could handle this one body piercing (her feeding tube) better.

Our van has decided to finally quit. It threatened to quit for several weeks now and it finally bit the dust this morning. We are waiting on the automotive MD’s assessment. It may require major surgery but hopefully it will be reasonable. I wish car insurance was like health insurance and all repairs and tune-ups could be covered just as our check-ups and surgeries are covered. I wonder if the presidential candidates would consider running on a platform of universal car-repair insurance coverage? Allstate and State Farm would probably hire a hit man to remove that candidate; lowest bid of course.

Jennifer is not quite as recovered, as we would like. She still feels discomfort and pressure that should be better by now. We are doing a couple of studies to see if all is as it should be and trying to discern how and when to go back to work. Soon time will be of the essence on these decisions.

Jesus Made Mud to Bring Light

Jacob was saying bedtime prayers recently. I asked him to think of something really neat about God to start off the prayer. He said, “God made…” At this point I’m expecting any one of a dozen possibilities from creation, like “God made the sun” or “God made me.” Instead, Jacob says, “God made mud.” He gets a giddy little grin on his face. Though technically true, I knew his motivation was to be silly so I tried to get him to think of something else. He sticks with the mud. Then the Holy Spirit reminded me. I said, “Jacob, Jesus made mud one time and wiped it on a man’s eyes.” Jacob naturally asked why Jesus would do such a thing. We talked about the story from John 9 about a man born blind that Jesus healed. Jesus spit in the dirt, made mud, and put it on the man’s eyes. When the man washed it off, he could see. Jacob thought that it was a cool story, especially the part of Jesus spitting and making mud. Jacob wanted to try and make mud that way too.

The next morning, Jacob wanted to read from the Bible he received for Christmas. I did not have a planned text to read and we ended up on Psalm 27:1 “The LORD gives me light and saves me. Why should I fear anyone? The LORD is my place of safety, why should I be afraid?” (NIRV) Then I remembered our prayers from the night before and we turned to John 9. As we read the story, I was reminded that Jesus made a statement just before he made mud. He said, “While I am in the world, I am the Light of the world.” (9:5) Then Jesus made the mud and put it in the man’s eyes. The man could see for the first time. Jesus used mud to bring light. Why mud? This story starts off with a related question. When the disciples saw the blind man they asked if the man’s sins or the sins of his parent brought on the blindness. Jesus said neither. He said this man was born blind so that the works of God might be displayed in his life. Spit and dirt would be used to bring light into the blind man’s life. This man’s blindness would be used to demonstrate that Jesus is the Light of the world. Jacob and I learned that God is light and that light is not only something we can see but also it is the light by which we see everything else. Psalm 27 and John 9 remind us that in the light we are saved from fear. It is hard to understand why we have to go through the mud to get there sometimes, but in a fallen world there is quite a bit of mud. Battens disease is one example of that mud, but when it is washed away we will see clearly, for the first time. When God allows or even places any mud in our lives, it will be so we can wash it away and say as the blind man, “one thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” In that Light, there is love that casts out all fear and brings salvation.

Back to School and Wet Sheets

Macayla has gone back to school and it has helped her greatly. She enjoys all the activity and music. Her tube site has gotten better, but she still is not completely healed. We still have granulation around the site and some of it is needed to finish closing up the track where her tube comes through. It still leaks around the tube itself and this has proven to be messy. Between the leaking stomach contents and explosive diapers, we have changed her sheets every day for two weeks and twice on some days. BB (Macayla’s grandmother) said that Macayla just wants hotel style room service with fresh linens on the bed everyday. She is getting it lately. Fortunately, she never liked chocolate, so I don’t have to worry about leaving chocolate on her pillow. In the meantime, check out the new photos on the image gallery page. 2007 was a big year and a fast year. It seems like we barely had time to experience it so I’m glad we have photos to remember what we did.

Two Years

It was two years ago today that we received notification of Macayla’s diagnosis. It was a colder and cloudy day. Today is more pleasant. But we had to take Macayla in to have her tube switched out. We finally got a Mic-Key button put in. Mic-Key feeding tubes are held in place by a balloon inside the stomach that is filled with water. It has a locking mechanism that the feeding tubes lock onto. The advantage to these tubes is that we can change them out at home. We will simply deflate the balloon and the tube pulls out and then we can insert a new one and inflate it to keep it in place. It has to be changed more often than other tubes, but it is less traumatic to her site and doesn’t require a drive to the doctor’s office. So Macayla got a new tube for Christmas. Our nurse quipped that everyone wants Mickey for Christmas, but this was not what Macayla had in mind! The tube change went great and Macayla only bled a minimal amount. Her site is healing well. We went down afterward and had a contrast study on x-ray that showed that the new tube is flowing correctly.

Much has changed with Macayla in two years. She was eating, talking, and walking two years ago. She ate cheese constantly. She loved filling up her little purses with all the toys she could fit into them. They would overflow with stuff. She takes after her mom! She liked playing with any animal. She now is immobile. She doesn’t eat or drink or talk. She is much taller and thinner than she was two years ago. She still has a great smile, a quirky sense of humor, a great memory and still loves movies. It has been a long two years in some respects, but it has been a blur. We stay so focused at times that suddenly we look up and discover that two years has passed without our full realization. Where will we be two years from now? 

Jesus' Address

Christmas has all of its cultural baggage and even controversy these days. The season (more accurately the marketing) begins at Halloween. The celebration is often warped by materialism as throngs of people step on each other to buy presents. Stores are afraid to use the term “Christmas” because it might offend, so they use the term “holiday” even though it comes from the words “holy day.” This season’s purpose has indeed become muddled. It is difficult to not get sucked into the vortex of controversy, wrapping paper, money, and stress over the people that are so hard to buy for.
As I watch Jacob get more excited about Christmas this year than any other so far, I wish I could recapture the wonder and excitement of childhood. I wish I could recapture that feeling, that “Christmas spirit” that seems so fleeting in adulthood. But Jacob’s questions and statements about Santa Clause made me realize where the true wonder lies in Christmas. Jacob said, “You have to be good if you want Santa to bring you any presents.” This concept is expressed countless times at Christmas in songs and among parents to their children. This concept departs radically from reality. The wonder of Christmas lies in the fact that the God of the universe didn’t go down a list and weigh out if we had been good enough to deserve being saved from a fallen world. The fact is, compared to a perfect and holy God, just one of our sins puts us on the “naughty” list forever. The wonder of Christmas is that the God of the universe who created us loves us so much that he came to us. He came to us in the flesh, a man, in surprisingly low economic and social status among the people 2000 years ago. The psalmist echoed this wonder when he wrote, “What is man that You (God) are mindful of him?”
Like us, the first disciples were caught up in the physical of the incarnation. The Gospel of John starts off with all of these lofty declarations of Jesus being eternal, from before time and the creator of all things. Jesus is called the Lamb of God and the Son of God. But when the first disciples meet Jesus their first question is “Where do you live?” Ravi Zacharias points out in Jesus Among Other Gods that we certainly could think of better questions to ask than the address of a man declared to be the savior of the world. The reader and the disciples get the same challenge from Jesus, “Come and see.” When one of the disciples learned that Jesus was from Nazareth, his response was “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Like us they were so focused on the limited portion of reality called the physical. Jesus’ address was not merely Nazareth. Jesus of Nazareth was also God the Son of heaven. Jesus’ address is at the heart of what Christmas is all about. It carries us through the materialism and controversy of Christmas. It shows us what is important to the God who is mindful of us and loves us.
When we and the disciples want to know where Jesus is from, he challenges us to “Come and see.” Ultimately, Jesus was from beyond Nazareth. Jesus was born of a virgin, conception without consummation. His origin is heaven and that does indeed tell us his worth. “Can any good thing come out of heaven?” Come and see the baby, wrapped in swaddling and lying in a manger. Come and see that life is not a material pursuit or about our earthly address. Ravi Zacharias wrote, “For the disciples, Jesus’ answer to their simple question – “Where do you live?” – was to lift them beyond race and culture, beyond wealth and power, beyond time and distance to make them true citizens of the world, informed by the world to come…He showed them the inclusiveness of His love for the whole world. But in that was the exclusivity of His truth, for which they were willing to give their lives. We have reversed Jesus’ order. We have made truth relative and culture supreme and have been left with a world in which wickedness reigns.” I pray Jesus will reign with all his wonder in our hearts this Christmas.

The Tube Plan

Macayla went back to see the surgeon again today. Her incision where the tube was placed had looked better this past Sunday and Jennifer and I were in the hospital Monday through Wednesday morning. When I saw Macayla’s incision Wednesday, I could tell it had opened up more since I had seen it last. It was draining like crazy and so I stepped up on using the special gauze they had given us (Aquacel) and changed it out multiple times a day. I called the surgeon about it and when we got into see him today, her wound had already improved. But he cauterized it with silver nitrate and we are hoping that it will look better by Monday when we will pick back up with the Aquacel. For those who are interested, we cut small pieces of the Aquacel and pack it into the incision right at the tube and it absorbs all the discharge to help keep the incision dry. If you are not a person interested in such things, sorry and I hope you aren’t reading this on your lunch break or something. In the meantime, we plan to go back in two weeks and trade out this Bard Button (that still leaks) with a Mic-Key. Our prayer is that the removal process won’t tear up her tube track and start the bleeding all over again. We pray that she will continue to do well with her feedings and get healed up soon. Overall, she is a great patient and handles all this much better than her daddy.

Love My Body

As Jennifer is recovering from surgery, I have been exposed to more than I ever wanted to know about the human body. I am so thankful that there are people like Jennifer and my sister-in-law who are willing to go into the medical field and take care of the rest of us. I get quite squeamish about much of this. But this morning, in the hospital room, God reminded me of something He said. He said that husbands are to love their wives as they love their own bodies. The implication is that we would naturally protect and care for our own wellbeing and since Jennifer and I are “one flesh” in marriage, caring for her is caring for me too. Lest we think God wants us to use a selfish motivation to care for our wives, He said in the sentence before this that husbands are to give themselves up for their wives as Christ gave himself up for the Church (and this isn’t the brick building on the corner, but the people who make up the Church around the globe). He gave his body over at the cross to bear the pain and separation from God that our sin has brought. He died a horrible and painful death in our place. I believe God reminded me of this because in the coming weeks, I must be prepared to once again give myself up to care for Jennifer. I’m not too good at this normally. Selfishness and my agendas tend to distract me from her care. I couldn’t take her place in the operating room (I am lacking the uterus necessary for a hysterectomy) but I wish I could take her pain away. I don’t understand all that she needs medically, but I pray that I don’t fail to provide what she needs holistically. I pray she recovers and that I learn more about what it means to “love my own body” by caring for her. I pray my care for her won’t fall away after she recovers. I pray this simple circumstance can be used to teach me more about the mystery and wonder of what Christ did for us at the cross. Check out Ephesians in the Bible. The whole letter is worth a read.

800 ml

Macayla seems to have turned a corner. Yesterday and today she has gotten all or almost all of the normal amount of formula she should get in a day. She is scheduled to get 800 ml of formula per day plus some free water. That may sound strange. We don’t charge her for the formula or the water, so don’t worry. We have struggled some days to get 200 ml in her after the surgery, but this weekend it got better and then yesterday and today she seemed to leap back into the groove. She will still have a GI study to see the functionality and structure of her stomach and GI but at least she’s back up to where she should be. Her home nurse, Hannah and her Grandfather Keith were taking care of her the last couple of days and they apparently have the magic touch of getting Macayla back up to speed. This was especially good since Jennifer and I have been tied up at the hospital as Jennifer recovers from her surgery. Jennifer’s surgery went well and she absolutely needed to do it according to what the surgeon found. But she’s doing well and the doctor seems pleased with her progress. We have certainly seen the sustaining power of Christ through the prayers and ministry of others. We are so blessed and thank you to all who are praying and helping. Thank you for being the hands and feet of Christ.