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Friday, February 29, 2008

God?

I know you are there and i know you are watching over me...but God,its just one of those days...i know nothing major has happened...i just hate feeling like i dont have control over anything going on around me...im getting tired and i need you to hold me up, please?...i cant do it alone...im sorry im not as strong as i should be...im sorry if it seems like i dont have faith in you...i promise i do...please daddy just carry me through this day

if you are reading this please say a little prayer for me

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Wordless Wednesday (father son bonding)

Monday, February 25, 2008

Screaming screaming screaming

So the boys have not stopped screaming at us since last night. They are currently laying upstairs in their crib that they never lay in anymore, screaming their little heads off. Kyle fed them at 4, they woke up at 5 screaming bloody murder. I fed them at 7, still they felt the need to scream. I refuse to feed them until 10, I am staying on a schedule. I put them upstairs so it doesn't seem like they are screaming in my ear. Now if they fall asleep... I am not sure if I should wake them up to feed them at 10, or let them sleep. Wow, that is a hard decision.


If you notice Aiden is showing us his big boy skills by holding not only his head up, but his chest as well. Nathaniel is just being a stinker playing the I want my pacifier, but I am going to try to throw it at you once you look away!

Friday, February 22, 2008

Aiden's "manly" scar




Aiden is such a trooper! These are from the 17th, but he has already lost 2 of the strips and he gets his stitches taken out on Tuesday!!!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Tagged x 2

So my beautiful friends Tonni and Erin tagged me to do this random thingy.....

Rules:

  1. List 7 random things about yourself that people may not know.
  2. Link the person who sent it to you and leave a comment on their blog so their readers can visit yours.
  3. Post the rules on your blog.
  4. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, linking their blog. Let each person know they've been tagged by leaving them a comment on their blog.
1. I lurk some peoples blogs and myspaces just because I secretly wish I had their life and I need to make sure I am up on their current events to compare my life to theirs.
2. I was bulimic 2 out of my 4 years in high school. Not because I needed to loose weight or thought I needed to loose weight, but because it was either smoke cigarettes to fit in or throw up my lunch with the girls.
3. Leather smells gross and I often get sick in my mouth when I smell it, yet I want a car that has leather seats??
4. I think that gold paper clips smell funny.
5. When I was 13 my mother had a rose bush that I felt she loved more than me, so I tried to kill it... but low and behold that damn thing made it through weed-b-gone, bleach, boiling water, salt and vinegar, salt and soap, pee (yes pee), Lysol, and laundry detergent (the powdered kind, big mistake the next day it rained and then she found out "something: was wrong).
6. When I go out to eat with a friend and there are no kids with us, I have a glass of wine or daiquiri and I think of easier times.
7. I refuse to buy larger clothes just because I think I will loose the baby fat "some day".

Okay ladies... I am tagging Tracy, Melissa, Jill, Dawn, Amanda, Jennifer and Brandy

If you don't have a blog spot, I encourage you to make one, it helps generate some good thoughts and it is not as lame as myspace. If you don't want to make one then can you please post 7 random things in my comments section!

xoxo
Kat

He's My Son

Song Lyrics by: Mark Schultz

I'm down on my knees again tonight,
I'm hoppin' this prayer will turn out right.
See, there is a boy that needs Your help.
I've done all that I can do myself
His mother is tired,
I'm sure You can understand.
Each night as he sleeps
She goes in to hold his hand,
And she tries
Not to cry
As the tears fill her eyes.

Can You hear me?
Am I getting through tonight?
Can You see him?
Can You make him feel all right?
If You can hear me
Let me take his place some how.
See, he's not just anyone, he's my son.

Sometimes late at night I watch him sleep,
I dream of the boy he'd like to be.
I try to be strong and see him through,
But God, who he needs right now is You.
Let him grow old,
Live life without this fear.
What would I be
Living without him here?
He's so tired,
And he's scared
Let him know that You're there.

Can You hear me?
Am I getting through tonight?
Can You see him?
Can You make him feel all right?
If You can hear me
Let me take his place some how.
See, he's not just anyone, he's my son.

Can You hear me?
Am I getting through tonight?
Can You see him?
Can You make him feel all right?
If You can hear me
Let me take his place somehow.
See, he's not just anyone.

Can You hear me?
Can You see him?
Please don't leave him,
He's my son.


This song did a lot for me when the boys were tiny. When they were sick. Beautiful lyrics.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Wordless Wednesday - Father son moment

Monday, February 11, 2008

Hibernation

It is going to be a rough week. Aiden has surgery on Thursday morning at 7:30 a.m. Hopefully I will be back to normal next week when he gets to come home....Really the only way I know how to deal with it is to go back into hibernation... be with my boys.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

My boys made my month today

We have noticed that Nathaniel has been seeing stuff the last few days, yesterday morning, he actually looked at me, not just glanced and turned away, but he looked at me!! He sits in his swing that our friend Dawn gave us and he looks at the birdies and butterflies that are on the top that spin around. He sat there for over an hour and a half today, just looking because he can! Tonight I gave Aiden a bath in their new big boy bath for the first time! On Thursday I had to take Aiden down to Children's because it looks like his fungus has turned into a yeast infection and it has taken over not only his stoma site, but it is also under the whole spot where the bag adheres to. The places where the fungus had started, the skin around that area had totally came off and was open and bleeding. So they told me to put the Nyastatin powder on it, as well as this product called a no sting barrier film. It is a little sponge with a medicine on it, that you dab on after you put the powder on, and it seals the powder to the skin and forms a barrier on the skin so when you place the bag on it, there is no more irritation. Plus if any of his stool happens to get to his skin, the barrier film will prevent it from irritating the infection and his skin! So anywho... I was giving him his bath, and the skin looked so much better tonight than it did on Thursday when we went to Children's. But after his bath I put him up on the couch and was drying him off and rubbing his head drying his hair (what little he has) and I noticed it seemed like he was looking at me?!?! I was like there is no way. So I moved a little to the right slowly, and he followed me! He followed me! Went slowly to the left, and he followed me! Kyle was sitting right there and got to experience it with me! I was so happy I couldn't stop crying! This boy has been through so much! So much. He is beating all the odds. Doing things the doctors said he may never do. So after I dried him off and dressed him, I sat there and held him while he brought his little head up, bobbing away just to look at me! My little men are so amazing! So I gave him to Kyle and he did the same thing as he did with me, he kept lifting his little head that sits on his weak little neck just to look at his daddy. Thank you boys for giving me tears of joy instead of the tears of hurt I have had this week. Thank you Lord for giving us these two wonderful, amazing, beautiful little boys.


Friday, February 1, 2008

To Write Love on Her Arms

This is an amazing story, and it really touched my heart this week. I have been battling some funk, but nothing this bad. In my sleepless nights I have found this website, and the story of the girl named Renee. God really does show up big. I have made the spots that really stick out to me bold, the words that I have been repeating to myself, even though I have a differnt story.



TO WRITE LOVE ON HER ARMS by Jamie Tworkowski

Pedro the Lion is loud in the speakers, and the city waits just outside our open windows. She sits and sings, legs crossed in the passenger seat, her pretty voice hiding in the volume. Music is a safe place and Pedro is her favorite. It hits me that she won't see this skyline for several weeks, and we will be without her. I lean forward, knowing this will be written, and I ask what she'd say if her story had an audience. She smiles. "Tell them to look up. Tell them to remember the stars."

I would rather write her a song, because songs don't wait to resolve, and because songs mean so much to her. Stories wait for endings, but songs are brave things bold enough to sing when all they know is darkness. These words, like most words, will be written next to midnight, between hurricane and harbor, as both claim to save her.

Renee is 19. When I meet her, cocaine is fresh in her system. She hasn't slept in 36 hours and she won't for another 24. It is a familiar blur of coke, pot, pills and alcohol. She has agreed to meet us, to listen and to let us pray. We ask Renee to come with us, to leave this broken night. She says she'll go to rehab tomorrow, but she isn't ready now. It is too great a change. We pray and say goodbye and it is hard to leave without her.

She has known such great pain; haunted dreams as a child, the near-constant presence of evil ever since. She has felt the touch of awful naked men, battled depression and addiction, and attempted suicide. Her arms remember razor blades, fifty scars that speak of self-inflicted wounds. Six hours after I meet her, she is feeling trapped, two groups of "friends" offering opposite ideas. Everyone is asleep. The sun is rising. She drinks long from a bottle of liquor, takes a razor blade from the table and locks herself in the bathroom. She cuts herself, using the blade to write "FUCK UP" large across her left forearm.

The nurse at the treatment center finds the wound several hours later. The center has no detox, names her too great a risk, and does not accept her. For the next five days, she is ours to love. We become her hospital and the possibility of healing fills our living room with life. It is unspoken and there are only a few of us, but we will be her church, the body of Christ coming alive to meet her needs, to write love on her arms.

She is full of contrast, more alive and closer to death than anyone I've known, like a Johnny Cash song or some theater star. She owns attitude and humor beyond her 19 years, and when she tells me her story, she is humble and quiet and kind, shaped by the pain of a hundred lifetimes. I sit privileged but breaking as she shares. Her life has been so dark yet there is some soft hope in her words, and on consecutive evenings, I watch the prettiest girls in the room tell her that she's beautiful. I think it's God reminding her.

I've never walked this road, but I decide that if we're going to run a five-day rehab, it is going to be the coolest in the country. It is going to be rock and roll. We start with the basics; lots of fun, too much Starbucks and way too many cigarettes.

Thursday night she is in the balcony for Band Marino, Orlando's finest. They are indie-folk-fabulous, a movement disguised as a circus. She loves them and she smiles when I point out the A&R man from Atlantic Europe, in town from London just to catch this show.

She is in good seats when the Magic beat the Sonics the next night, screaming like a lifelong fan with every Dwight Howard dunk. On the way home, we stop for more coffee and books, Blue Like Jazz and (Anne Lamott's) Travelling Mercies.

On Saturday, the Taste of Chaos tour is in town and I'm not even sure we can get in, but doors do open and minutes after parking, we are on stage for Thrice, one of her favorite bands. She stands ten feet from the drummer, smiling constantly. It is a bright moment there in the music, as light and rain collide above the stage. It feels like healing. It is certainly hope.

Sunday night is church and many gather after the service to pray for Renee, this her last night before entering rehab. Some are strangers but all are friends tonight. The prayers move from broken to bold, all encouraging. We're talking to God but I think as much, we're talking to her, telling her she's loved, saying she does not go alone. One among us knows her best. Ryan sits in the corner strumming an acoustic guitar, singing songs she's inspired.

After church our house fills with friends, there for a few more moments before goodbye. Everyone has some gift for her, some note or hug or piece of encouragement. She pulls me aside and tells me she would like to give me something. I smile surprised, wondering what it could be. We walk through the crowded living room, to the garage and her stuff.

She hands me her last razor blade, tells me it is the one she used to cut her arm and her last lines of cocaine five nights before. She's had it with her ever since, shares that tonight will be the hardest night and she shouldn't have it. I hold it carefully, thank her and know instantly that this moment, this gift, will stay with me. It hits me to wonder if this great feeling is what Christ knows when we surrender our broken hearts, when we trade death for life.

As we arrive at the treatment center, she finishes: "The stars are always there but we miss them in the dirt and clouds. We miss them in the storms. Tell them to remember hope. We have hope."

I have watched life come back to her, and it has been a privilege. When our time with her began, someone suggested shifts but that is the language of business. Love is something better. I have been challenged and changed, reminded that love is that simple answer to so many of our hardest questions. Don Miller says we're called to hold our hands against the wounds of a broken world, to stop the bleeding. I agree so greatly.

We often ask God to show up. We pray prayers of rescue. Perhaps God would ask us to be that rescue, to be His body, to move for things that matter. He is not invisible when we come alive. I might be simple but more and more, I believe God works in love, speaks in love, is revealed in our love. I have seen that this week and honestly, it has been simple: Take a broken girl, treat her like a famous princess, give her the best seats in the house. Buy her coffee and cigarettes for the coming down, books and bathroom things for the days ahead. Tell her something true when all she's known are lies. Tell her God loves her. Tell her about forgiveness, the possibility of freedom, tell her she was made to dance in white dresses. All these things are true.

We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don't get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won't solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we're called home.

I have learned so much in one week with one brave girl. She is alive now, in the patience and safety of rehab, covered in marks of madness but choosing to believe that God makes things new, that He meant hope and healing in the stars. She would ask you to remember.