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Showing posts from March, 2013

I love the word "March"

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When you find out you are pregnant you never forget the moment when you saw the pink plus sign.  You remember everything about it...where you bought the test, where you took it, the time of year, how you reacted, how you told your spouse, and on and on.  Adopting has a moment much like that too.  The moment you find out you are going to have a child.  For some, like with Elie, it was seeing her picture on the waiting child list on our computer.  For others it comes from a much awaited phone call. The word "March" will forever be synonymous in my mind with finding Faith and on a greater scale the month that changed the entire trajectory of my life.  If you are interested, you can read the whole story of that day  here .  After 18 months of waiting the call finally came.  The call to tell us there was a little girl for us to consider adopting.  There were lots of unknowns.  She was very sick and she was diagnosed with Spina Bifida.  We were the only ones on the list who had

Not Broken

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She has not broken her arm.  She is training her brain to use her right arm. Sometime while Elie was being developed inside her birth mother, she had a stroke.  This stroke weakened the right side of her body.  Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy.  That is the label that we were given this past fall.  Her right side is significantly smaller and shorter than the left.  Gross and Fine Motor skills are challenging.  However this girl is a fighter.  What she has learned to do using only her left hand is amazing.  Ever try to close and snap your jeans using only one hand? When we first met last summer, Elie rarely used her right hand.  She had grown so used to just using the left one that her brain seldom remembered she even had another hand.  We started encouraging her to try to use her right hand throughout the day.  "Use both hands" was a phrase said over and over all day long.  Many struggles, tears, and frustration have gone into getting that right hand involved. Her progre

What I have learned while doing nothing...

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The past two months have been so very different for me and for our family.  Our normal has been totally disrupted by a precious child growing inside my womb.  As I was laying in bed the other day I started thinking about all that I have learned while doing nothing. 1.  My husband loves me with an unconditional love that blows me away.  His sacrifice to me and our kids is incredible.  I would have not have been this understanding and patient.  He is tired, he gets frustrated... but I have never once felt like he was upset with me for how little I have been able to participate in our family life.  I thought about when I was pregnant with Tyler and that first year after he was born.  That season was so difficult in our marriage.  It is incredible to watch the man Kevin has become and I am inspired to know God more because of him.   2.  Life goes on even when I can't participate in it.  The world has not stopped and little have even noticed that I have dropped off the face of t

The Scent of a Memory

So the past six weeks for our family have been rough, but there have also been many gems of blessings along the road.  God graciously showers His love on us even in the valleys of life.  Because of my nausea from growing my precious baby, I discovered using essential oils for the health of our entire family.  I was so excited about the results that I had for myself that I ordered a starter kit of basic oils to use for all of us. The day the package arrived in the mail was perfect timing.  Elie arrived home from preschool with a fever and neon green mucus oozing from her nose.  Those of you who know me well know that I do not do well with snot.  I can clean up intestinal messes all day long and watch for hours during a surgery, but the respiratory stuff gags me on a normal day.  This was always  my Achilles heal working at the hospital.  So I was anxious to get the green stopped and to experiment with my new box of goodies. The oils really did help Elie tremendously healthwise, but