Laughter

Laughter...

It takes all forms...I remember this worker at House of Fabrics when I was a kid that my siblings and I would (to our shame) try to mimic and make fun of her laugh because it sounded more like a Model T having difficulty starting rather than a normal laugh. To us, that was the funniest thing in the world until finally, someone told us if we kept mimicking her, we may end up with the same laugh. As a kid, that was a solemn thought.

Anyways, that little bunny trail was more for your entertainment than what this post is really about.

As you know, the accident has left David with lots of body parts that don't work right. Most of the time it's just plain frustrating and aggravating that they won't just cooperate.  His left side, especially, doesn't pull its weight. When he's on heavy pain meds, they just plain quit working.  Today one of his body parts was not doing what it was supposed to. Instead of being discouraged about it, David started making wry comments about it and we just started chuckling. It felt so good to just laugh and just not worry about stuff.

The chiropractor David has been seeing for a few weeks has started him on a diet. This diet is similar to what people are calling a Paleo diet - supposedly what cavemen ate. Anyways, he can't have grains, sugar, fruit except for berries, avocados, Granny Smith apples, lemons and limes, moderate proteins, no root vegetables like carrots or potatoes, and minimal legumes.  He is supposed to do this diet for two weeks and then ease up a little.  Now I like to cook and bake a lot but this diet sort of takes the wind out of my sails. It's very time consuming because basically everything in a can or package have sugar, grains or starch in them so EVERYTHING has to be from scratch. If you know David, you know that, especially on the road as a lineman, his diet consisted of gallons of coffee, donuts, gas station fare, crunchy tacos from Taco Bell and a V-8 here and there to get his "vegetables" . :)  This diet is killing him. Tonight, we'd had it and majorly cheated. I stopped staring at Pinterest recipes for cauliflower pizza crusts and avocado-based grasshopper pie and loaded us up into our van.  We pigged out at a pizza buffet, stuffing our faces with so much carbs and sugar. It was glorious!  We were just grinning all night.

Laughter makes a day seem alright even when you have a toddler testing the limits of your coronary arteries by playing in rat poison, hand sanitizer and climbing to the highest perches of her bedroom to nap.

Rolling videos

Ok, so this may seem silly to be posting videos of David rolling in bed, but it is an amazing thing that he can do pretty well for the first time since his accident!

Here's the proof!

My Egypt

Wednesday night David had a severe headache again.  I tried the new pain medication the neurologist prescribed.   I tried peppermint essential oil.  I tried almost every PT headache treatment technique I know (and I've treated a LOT of people with headaches).  NOTHING even made a dent!  I was so angry and frustrated.  We've been trying so many different medications and treatments for David's headaches and nothing is working.  I cried out to God in desperation (and probably a bit of unrighteous fury and frustration) to take David's headaches away.  He has so many challenges, why this incurable, almost constant pain too?  God didn't take his headache away in that moment, so off to the ER we went, where they are getting to know us by name.  It was an unusually busy night at the ER with several critical patients, so a person with a bad headache that's becoming known as a regular visitor gets put on the bottom of the list.  So we waited for several hours and then he got doped up on the regular dose of morphine.  That just made him dopey but no pain relief.  Who doesn't get pain relief from morphine!?  So they gave him another half dose.  That did the trick.  We got home at almost 1 am and I heaved my husband into bed.  I was hoping this was the beginning of a restful night.  Wrong.  I was woken up about every 20-30 minutes by a delirious, anxiety-ridden husband who was, come to find out, having an allergic reaction to morphine.  Great.   Back to square one.  Can't even take him to the ER for headaches now because that's all they have to give him.  It's been 4 days without a headache for David.  I don't know what's happened but God has given him a gift of these beautiful headache-free days!  Anyone who has experienced debilitating headaches for months on end will know what a gift these last few days are.

I believe that God has given me a promise from the beginning of this journey that David will have a quality life and purpose and live to see "...the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." (Psalms 27:13), not just a promise of a new body in eternity.  My faith is falling short as I wander around in this "wilderness" especially when the effects of the brain injury make progress negligible.  The lack of judgement about safety and lack of understanding about how things that aren't fun or may hurt may help to reach long-term goals, frustrates progress so easily.  I find myself longing for my "Egypt" instead of what God has for us today and in the future.

What is my "Egypt"?  Everything that destroys my contentment in Now and undermines my faith in a big, powerful, amazingly wise God.   I need faith like Caleb and Joshua that God will conquer the giants that look so incredibly big and impossible to beat.  Pray for us in our spiritual, physical and emotional battles against giants every day.