Home Sweet Home

We're settling in more and more in our new home.

I love discovering new little things about our house.

Like the Jasmine vine that flowered this week and smells so wonderful!

One of those little "blessings" that really made my day.

Of course, I finally sit down to blog and Corbin spills his water all over the table!!

Bye for now.



The Less I Know

The older I get, the more I realize how much I don't know.  I think that's why writing on my blog has become harder.  I have no pearls of wisdom or great epiphanies.  Each new thing conquered often returns back into defeat.   I get the kitchen under control, only to have the laundry back up.  Or the kids are being (relatively) well behaved, but my quiet time is non-existent.  Or I'm spending time with God at the expense of my cleaning house.  Or some such other compromise.

I've learned that there are no 5 steps to greatness, happiness, or fulfillment.  And while my short-lived victories have me feeling on top of the world, that only means it's a longer fall down to pits-ville, HA!

If anything, I'm learning to be content (but not complacent) with where I am physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  If my quiet time feels like I'm reading out of the Webster's Dictionary, that's ok.  Tomorrow is another day and I can give that up to God. 

The present moment has become more and more important as I realize that I don't want to be chained by the past, and the future is promised to no one (no matter how great "my" plans are).

I'm not sure if all this is just apathy, or being finally at peace with myself.  I'm nothing, if not honest on this blog, as you all well know.  I have no wish to paint a happy, fake picture of a perfect life.  And don't believe those facades on other blogs either.  The comparison game is old...and I think I lost a long time ago, haha.

Life these days is falling into a nice groove.  One could describe it as "busy", but I'm beginning to hate that word.  I think we overuse it and even use it as a measuring stick.  As if having a busy life somehow makes you a more valuable and worthy person.  We are all busy.  And we all have a great influence on how busy our lives are.  In other words, I often am the cause of my busyness.  And does busyness prove worth or give fulfillment?  I don't think so.

Corbin is on his first field trip today.  They went to the Dinosaur Park in Cedar Creek.  I can't help but count the minutes until I go pick him up.  I'm not usually a nervous parent, but he will be gone 2 more hours than usual and driving somewhere else, so it's got my mommy radar going off.  I miss my boy. :(

I'm still slowing unpacking things from the other house and we are still working on the old house.  Our schedule doesn't leave a lot of time for that sort of thing.  But we hope to have it finished soon.  Of course that adds stress - I will be one happy woman when that is finished!

For now I'm going to enjoy my Thursday afternoon.  Thursdays are quickly becoming my favorite day because it's the only day I don't have to go anywhere.  I can just enjoy being at home with my boys!!

Packing

I seriously think my junk multiplies with each box I pack.  Layer upon layer of "stuff" from over 10 years of living in this house.  My "I'll do/sort/throw it away it later" mentality is not serving me well now that I have to sort through all this stuff.  Blech.

Can a person change from a clutterbug (me) to someone who immediately deals with accumulation of junk?  I feel like I'm always in a rush and always putting off things until later.  I'll do those dishes later, I'll throw away that junk mail later, I'll sort through the boys toys later...and then when later comes there's always something else to be done.  Exhaustion...that's what I'm feeling!  Hehe.

Surely there's some site/blog/group out there for people like me?  If so, I'd love to know about it.

I Am Here

Yes, I am alive.  Things have been so hectic.  What kind of blog post do you write after over a month?!  So much to talk about, I've written hundreds of posts in my head over the last few weeks, just never found the time to sit down and type them out.

I feel like I've been hit by wave over wave of change and challenges.  Not sure when it's safe to come up for air.  Seems like things just keep coming.  It'd be easy to just do a bullet point list of the craziness, but each bullet would probably take it's own post to explain!

• We're buying a new house and close next week
• Corbin changed programs at school so now he's gone 4.5 hours each day :(
• We went on a quick vacation to the grandparents house last week
• I'm packing for our move!  We have a lot of junk.
• My grandmother is coming to live with us in our new house
• In preparation for her moving, she's coming to visit and see the new house on Wednesday
• Holidays...
• And life's general craziness besides all the above

Overwhelmed is my current state of mind - so pray for my sanity please!

I Walk Because...

Mark and I are the typical couple.  And like a typical couple, I occasionally steal some of his big T-shirts when the ratio of clean to dirty laundry is getting off balance - which is quite often.  But there's one shirt that I never wear.  It's the one that says:

I walk because I have MS.

Mark describes his uncertain diagnosis as not being allowed in a club, but still getting all the "benefits" - of course in this club, "benefits" are things like paralysis, numbness, nerve pain, etc.  You can read all about why he walks here.  But why he walks and why I walk are two different reasons.  So I'm going to tell you why I walk.

I walk because I refuse to give in.  When they were first diagnosing Mark (he calls it all the poking and prodding), I felt like a helpless bystander.  And as we got more and more bad test results and news we didn't want to hear, I just wanted to curl up and die.  I didn't eat or drink anything for 2 days.

After his spinal tap, we brought him home to rest and our friends came over to see him.  I ran into my room sobbing and just laid there and cried.  I knew everyone was out there and I just couldn't face them.  I didn't want to see the look in their eyes.  I didn't want to see the concern.  I didn't want to think of my "hero" as anything but who he'd always been - strong, healthy, and always there.

Those first few months were the worst.  It seemed like our whole life was MS.  The world had stopped and we were stuck in MS City.  It's all anyone would talk to me about - "How's Mark?"  Here I was, just barely holding it together, the only thing keeping me moving was distracting myself from it, and it was thrown in my face again and again.

Each time someone asked, my heart would sink and break into a million pieces all over again.  And no one would ask Mark directly.  Here, he was the one who seemed to get real benefit from talking about it with people, and instead they would ask me.

And the drugs, the horrible, horrible drugs.  For two years, I lost the person I knew as Mark.  It was so gradual, that I didn't even realize it until he got on a new medicine.  All of a sudden, he was back.  Oh yeah, there's the person I fell in love with.  He had lost that playful, sweet, patient, kind piece of his personality.  And I was left with a stranger.

I think I learned about love during those two years.  Even though my Mark was gone, I resolved to love the new Mark.  Love as a choice, not as an infatuation or conditional state.

I think the worst is the uncertainty.  We had so many plans.  We've given up so many plans.  Thinking about all the "what ifs".  When I think about them, I am paralyzed.  If I thought about them, I'm not really sure how I could get through life.  I don't think about them.  We have today.  And I live in today.

I don't think I'd be sitting here typing this today if I hadn't found the sweet peace and comfort in Jesus Christ.  Anyone who reads this blog, knows that He is a big part of my life.  What a lot of people don't know is that there was a long period in my life before Christ that I suffered with suicidal thoughts and cutting.  Praise God that He has healed me from those desperate thoughts.

 

The strength that I find to get up each morning and face our life, no matter the circumstances, is from Him.  I beg Him each day for the comfort only He can give me in the face of these circumstances.  To live each day in the knowledge of MS, and also the struggles we have with Corbin's disabilities is hard.  It would be easy to give up and wallow in my own little pity party.

This life is filled with sadness, but it is also filled with sweet joy and hope.  My husband is amazing.  He's the strongest person I know, and............
my heart tells me I can't live without him.

 

But my heart also knows that I will never be without him no matter what the circumstances.  And I will always be there for him - even if my hard shell defenses sometimes give him less than the sympathetic ear he truly deserves.  I guess that's just me protecting myself.

I love my husband so much, but I hate MS.  It's robbed us of so much, and it continues to rob us every day.  I wish I could take this burden from him, but I can't.  I wish someone could understand what it's like to stand by and watch your husband suffer, unable to do anything - not many do.

Most relate better to Mark - I think that's easier to get your head around.  I have deep respect for all the spouses out there who silently have MS or other chronic illnesses- not in a physical way, but in an emotional way.  I may not suffer the physical effects of MS, but it has certainly ravaged my life.

Personally, the MS Walk is the hardest day of the year for me.  Going there and meeting with all the other people suffering with MS is a reminder.  A reminder about how ugly this disease is.  I try not to compare Mark to anyone else.

My daily prayer, is that this disease would stay at bay - that we continue to have success with the drugs and therapies.  And seeing the different progressions of the disease on walk day shakes me to my core.

Having our friends and family around me that day is the only thing that gets me through.  And I appreciate each and every one of you who have supported us throughout the years. Your presence means more to me than I could ever possibly express.

We participate in the MS Walk each year as a reminder.  A reminder that we are still here, we are still struggling, but we are also still living.  And each year we celebrate the gift of another year of life.

I walk because I refuse to give up - there is so much life left to live and I am not going to waste one second of it.  Mark was diagnosed in 2005 and since then we have lived each day to the fullest - in just 6 short years we have had so much joy - 2 beautiful boys added to our family and days filled with laughter and love.

If you'd like to join us this year, the MS Walk is being held at Dell Diamond on Oct 29th (a saturday).  You can access our team page here.

Do The Next Thing

I read a great article this morning which emphasized the importance of just doing the next thing.  Not the endless "to-do" lists, or the unreachable quest of perfection, but only the next thing.  This was just what I needed to hear this morning in week 3 of homeschooling, therapy appointments, laundry, and Corbin's new school.  My last two weeks have been awesome in some respects, and downright failures in others!

I have excelled in working through my lesson plan for Hayden and we are definitely accomplishing and making progress.  Even when I was sick one day last week, we still finished all our work for the week.

But, in that same time, I've cooked dinner, oh about two times.  We ate out a lot and we grabbed lunch in the drive-thru most days.

I have successfully shuttled Corbin to and from appointments and gotten him ready for school each morning by his 7 o'clock bus time.

I have also struggled fitting in his daily "homework" from his speech therapist.

I haven't drowned in a pile of laundry (yet), but the laundry baskets aren't empty either.  I will say that no one has come stumbling out of their room complaining that they have no underwear.  So I'll call that a win.

And the last fail, I've been able to work out only once a week.  But hey, I did work out once each week, which could have been not at all...so success?  I guess it depends on your benchmarks.

So this morning, when I was feeling unmotivated and tired, all I really wanted to do was to stay in bed all day.  When I stumbled out of the bedroom, my previously clean living room now had toys all over it.  In the span of two hours, all my hard work from the previous day was erased.  And that's how it feels a lot of the time.  I clean so that I can clean some more later!  There is no "finish line" for me.  That irritates me.  I'm very much a completion, "job well done" type of gal.  Hrmph.

So in an effort to avoid my inevitable "work", I started my daily blog reading and came across this jewel - which had me saying "Exactly!" and "Yes!!!" a lot.  That's exactly what I needed to read this morning.  Just do the next thing.  I need to let go of what I'm not doing, what needs to be done, and what I should be doing...and just do the next thing.

I am letting go of my feelings of failure and inadequacies, my desire (although unattainable) for perfection, and my need to achieve and accomplish.

And I'm just doing the next thing...which right now means eating lunch. ;)

The Waiting Room

Three hours a week, Hayden and I keep ourselves occupied in the waiting room while Corbin gets therapy.  I'm getting better at bringing games, snacks, and things that will keep a four year old busy for a whole hour - believe me, it's not easy.  Especially, now that we have been going for two weeks.

The waiting room has a really cool ceiling in the kids area that has twinkling lights that look like a sky full of stars.  For the past few times, I've been dying to lay out on the floor "under the stars" with Hayden.  This time, I did it - and it was even better than I thought it would be: