I'll Praise You in this Storm

I thought that title, kind of summed up what we've been through the last few weeks. Even in the midst of our complete chaos and having a considerable amount of bad luck, we still praised God and knew he was still right beside us and guiding is in all we did.

Sometimes its so hard to see the good of things when things seem to go completely nuts. But I know through Tom and I's experiences in the past, that ya know. Everything seems to ALWAYS work out for the best for us. Lately, its just so hard to see the good in all of this because of the timing, which was really horrible, but we're beginning to see the positive effects of everything! So I'll tell ya about them:

Back about a month ago, we found out Julia had torticollis. (see webmd.com if you don't know what it is) But the diagnosis from the beginning wasn't great by any means. And if you've ever heard anything like this, hearing something is wrong with your precious baby girl, is one of the most heart breaking experiences. I cried many tears and prayed many prayers. We were then went to physical therapy and they said we'd have to come back every week until at LEAST the end of July, so the light at the end of the tunnel wasn't even the least bit visible yet. We were told at the end of our first appointment that they thought she would probably need a helmet to help fix this problem, and that she would need to wear this helmet 23 1/2 hours a day until she's at least a year old. So thinking about this right, is the idea that went through my head, was that there was going to be no doing her hair with barretts or putting her hair in ponytails or anything until she's able to not have to wear this helmet anymore. It was not a good feeling of her having a helmet that covered her entire head. Not to mention the strange looks that people get that have these types of helmets. People automatically assume the worst and assume your kid has mental problems, and not realize that its just so your kid has a good head shape. You see what I'm saying with all this. So this wasn't what we wanted to do and we were also told on top of it, that these helmets are NOT comfortable for little kids and many babies that get them this little struggle with them for quite sometime because they don't understand in the least that they're actually helping aside from their complete uncomfortableness. So we sent out prayer requests for our little Julia to help her with her neck muscles and for her head to take the appropriate shape and for a quick, smooth, recovery. And by golly...we went back 2 and a half weeks later for our next physical therapy appointment, and she had made a crazy amount of progress!! Her head shape improved by 1mm, which is big in her head!!!!!!!! AND...with the improvement of her head shape, there was improvement in the tightness of the muscle, so they don't think she's going to need a helmet anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This was the most recent news for us and let me tell you, it was the best news I had heard in a long time! We were very excited and overjoyed at this! The power of prayer is amazing and God works wonders.....and can do it quickly!!!!!!! YEA!!

Secondly, I found out two Thursdays ago that my job was going to be kind of cut from my work. This was VERY disappointing. I'll admit, I haven't cried that hard in a long time. I have never honestly loved my job so much. I LOVE going to work and really do enjoy what I do. And I'm the Employee Activity Committee leader and our Corporate Volunteer Council Representative for our clinic, so I felt not only was I going to be forced away from something I really enjoy, I was being taken away from my other enjoyments about my job too. It just led me to be very sad and a bit frustrated. THANKFULLY, they offered to keep me on and help me find a day that I could work with them, so I could keep my job. After talking with Tom and trying to decide, we figured it out between our two work schedules and New Horizon how it would work out. Tom's boss is seriously probably one the best bosses I've ever met. He's great and really appreciates everything about Tom and is willing to help us out in our situation. He's just wonderful. So anyways, we decided that I'm going to work on Mondays, during the day shift. The nice thing about this is, is that no more evening shifts for me!! At first that was a big disappointing, because it has worked out really well for us in the past, for the most part. But we looked at the situation further and better and realized that ya know, this really is going to work out better anyway. We're going to have more time together as a family....we're going to be able to make plans on evenings now where we were pretty restricted before because of my work schedule...we're going to be able to join leagues of sorts (kickball and fall softball!) through our church, and ya know I think thats it. And it probably doesn't sound great, but it really is!

Lastly, would be my health. Thats no completely up to par yet, but we've came a long ways! It started on Feb 11th when I went into the local urgent care for some real severe back pain. It turned out it was a galbladder attack and later on that day around 2pm, I was in surgery getting my galbladder out. A few weeks later, the SAME pain was back. It felt the exact same and I didn't know what to think other than the fact that I REALLY REALLY REALLY needed something for the pain and wanted this fixed...now. They thought it was pleursy because it hurt to breathe too, then with pain medicine, it went away for a few weeks. Well...you guessed it. It came back yet, one more time. And in and amongst this whole thing, they've begun to realize that was liver was getting out of control and my liver enzyme tests were completely out of wack and very abnormal. I started feeling the effects of my liver being out of wack because I was feeling VERY exhausted and my urine was becoming VERY dark (from the billirbin that was backing up from my liver). Then a few Thursdays ago, I got the pain uncontrollably again, when I was at home alone with the girls. I couldn't breathe but made it to my phone and called Tom to come get me very quickly. At this point I ventured into the emergency room and went under extensive testing and ended up having even higher liver enzyme tests, so they confirmed I had a small case of Hepatitis A. Well, I wish I could say that was it. But it continued. I came back to the local doctors office for a follow-up to double check my liver once more with Dr. Sczublewski (crazy enough, it is Joe Sczublewski's nephew...the teacher from Albert Lea!) Anyways, the liver enzymes ended up being about 4 times higher than what they were the day before. This just showed that things were backing up and that there was probably a blockage somewhere. So I got a call around 10:30pm on Thursday, telling me I was going to go in for an ERCP on Friday at noon. I was put completely under with general anesthesia, and from beginning to end, it took around 3 hours. Then the recovery process and getting back in the groove. Well, that was just two weeks ago. And here I am today!!! I had my liver retested again, and thankfully, my liver enzzymes have came down a little, they are still very high, so my liver isn't quite functioning up to par completely yet, but we're on the mend!! They expect it to come back down to normal within a month or so. I'm going back in at the end of this week for most testing to recheck the labs, so we got our fingers crossed that things continue to move in the right direction. But through all this, it has made me stronger and learn not only how wonderful of a husband Tom is, but made me really learn to depend on my faith more to get me through all of this. I didn't understand why all this was happening to me. And all this happening when I have a 3 month old daughter, and just about a 3 year old daughter! As if I didn't have enough on my plate. :-)

Thankfully, our problems and struggles, have really began to come to at least a little bit of a close. They're tapering down at least. I'm overjoyed to say I think things are working out better and we're really starting to see the good side of things through all the chaos. We have wonderful family that has helped us get through the past few weeks. My sister came and got the girls and has done more than her share for us, but has helped us tremendously, and Tom's parents took the girls the last surgery of mine and took them for the whole weekend so I could re-cooperate and my parents have been very good for support on the phone to reassure me that things were going to be fine and will all work out...eventually. I know Dana took time to care and talk to me through all this, which helped me a ton. Sometimes talking to someone just helped more than anything. Talking to Kira just wasn't doing it anymore, but she could give me a very big laugh and gave me some great hugs along the way.

Hopefully we're done with bad luck but I know we learned and got stronger along the way!

I have a good story from yesterday in church that I think was totally God working in and through us. We were sitting in church yesterday noticed a new person to our left, and a new person in front of us. The man sitting beside us had a bible and looked in good spirits and he seemed friendly and was into the service, but then there was a girl in front of us that was probably in her late 20's or so, that we noticed was never singing with the songs, and when communion was offered, she didn't take that either. She just sat kind of slumped down in the pew. I didn't know what the case was here but maybe she wasn't completely comfortable in the church. And the biggest thing that rings a bell with me here is that I should say hi and welcome her or something because when we were visiting other churches and some of the other churches we tried out just weren't welcoming for us. And that was a struggle and not a great feeling. So my goal was to make sure she didn't feel that way. So in the midst of the service, I was thinking to myself that I was going to talk to her after the service and see who she was and welcome her and stuff. Well, the service got over and she snuck out really quick. So I was pretty disappointed that we didn't get to talk to her but just continued out of the santuary to keep up the girls from Sunday school. Low and behold, there she was AGAIN, right in front of us because she had a little girl that was in the nursery that morning too! I felt this was totally God giving us a second chance to welcome her to our church. We feel that God put her right in front of us in this perfect situation for a reason! So we got the opportunity to talk to her and give her my email address and talk to her a little bit and it turns out, she's going to start coming to the church playgroup and get to know us all more! She seemed very nice but I'm assuming she was pretty early in her walk with God. I'm very excited to be able to say I was able to reach out to new people just like us awhile back. It was a great feeling and I hope it made a imprint on her heart and that she'll continue coming back to Cross of Glory! We felt good with the idea that along with God's help, we may have planted a seed with her!

Well, thats all I got for now!! Monday is amongst us all and it's a beautiful day outside, so its time to close this and enjoy the beautiful outdoors!!!!

Take Care all!!

Gettin back in the groove...

Wow, blogging within a few days of each other! Holy cow! :-) Just kiddin! I don't have that much news or anything to say but thought I'd blog anyway!

We had a field trip yesterday with our playgroup!! We went to a farm and let the kids see, pet and feed the animals. We got to see sheep, chickens, pigs, and lots of their babies too. We also got to see lots of plants that they're starting to grow too. It was really cute to watch the kids in complete awe of these animals. It was good fun! I know it was definately the highlight of Kira's week! Unfortunately it was the day that we got snow here, and we were outside of just short bits of time and poor Julia caught a cold. It's a real bummer. She was bundled up really good and kept cozy with me but apparently that didn't do the job. :-(

This is just a little side note for me that I'm pretty excited about that I was gonna share with you! I am the Employee Activity Committee leader at the clinic I work at and we recently hosted a blood drive through Memorial Blood Centers and we had the most successful drive we've ever had!! It was a great feeling to know that we're touching lives in and outside of our clinic!! For those of you who can (I can't because I just had a c-section and gallbladder surgery) but I HIGHLY recommend you try to donate blood! There is a shortage right now and Memorial Blood Centers really needs our help! It only takes a half hour, or less and it comes with some personal satisfaction that you've done something great to save a life! Let me know if you want details on where you can donate, or if you're interested, I'm hosting another blood drive on July 1st from 9am-noon in Chanhassen, I'd LOVE to get you signed up!!!!!!!!!

We're going home this weekend and I'm super pumped!! We're going down mainly for a few bridal showers for my soon to be sister in law! Tom's brother is getting married in May and we're absolutely overjoyed for them! It should be good fun to be able to hang out with family again!!

Tom's starting softball pretty soon again, which is going to be very exciting for us! He fairly recently hurt his arm and is recooperating, so hopefully his arm is good to go by the end of April. I believe the first game is the last Sunday in April. It's a pretty competitive league and a really fun time to watch. The games are in Fridley and are usually in the evening. The team is pretty good and I'm excited to see them try to get 1st place AGAIN! :-D Come out to a game sometime! Let me know if you 're interested and I'll get you the guys schedule and you can come to some awesome games!

Well, laundry is done and I really need to catch up on that before we leave for the weekend! Have a wonderful weekend!!

Take Care!!