Light

Things have been difficult. No lie.

Below are some photos from right before everything started, this is what I looked like:

Of course things changed this past summer...


And then it hit, and this is what I looked like:




















Sometimes a picture speaks a thousand words. I haven't taken many pictures of myself recently because I've felt as though there has been a light that has left my eyes and my face. It's a comment many people have shared with me. "You look a little bit better, but I can see it in your eyes."

I know that no one means anything negative and I have tried to focus on the positive, but it's been hard to deny that all of this experience which has taken it's toll on so many things, hasn't also taken it's toll on my face and my soul shining outward from within.

My husband and I recently decided that through all of this hard time we needed time to reconnect. We struggled through what that would look like. My parents came out and stayed with our little guy to give us a weekend to ourselves.  Baby Boy is almost 15 months and I've never been away from him unless I was in the hospital. Without a ton of details, (to be honest I don't want to be critical of the original plan) - but our plans got derailed and changed.  We found ourselves in Chicago, bags packed, car parked and in a bit of chaos. We were stuck in the midst of a decision of what to do.  We made a commitment to spend time together, but the original plan just wasn't going to work.

Here's what I love and hate about my husband (isn't that always the way?) He makes a decision and commits so fast it makes my head spin...I like to ponder, run it over a few times. But, he won and we quickly switched gears and went home that night. We took out one set of clothes from our suitcase and put in another set of clothes into our suitcase and got a quick night's sleep. We woke up found a hotel and drove to Starved Rock. Just like that, I had no time to ponder and no time to spend my typical "Barbara think way too much about it time." Just be. Just drive. No worrying.

There's a picture that we posted on Facebook and it actually looks like me pre-drama. My eyes are bright and I'm alert and happy. We were outside and birds were chirping and we walked hand in hand.  I remembered what fun was! And I remembered how EASY it was to have fun with my husband, how funny he is and how well he listens. Away from everything we were able to talk about our future and our past and how we fought through the last few months and that we were hopeful to be rounding the corner of this...hoping that there wouldn't be a relapse-but even if it happened, that we were still so happy with the progress.

It was like taking a step out of roaring rapids from a river before jumping right back in. We caught our breath, we danced around a fire, we ate great food, and got our strength back, knowing full well that it was temporary and more hard times were waiting in the morning - we knew we had to jump right back in. They weren't the same hard times, some things were getting easier. Now we are facing the aftermath, picking up pieces, deciding how to handle the "moving on" part. The new clarity or lack there of...

After coming back I thought of nothing better than supporting my husband with something he loves most, his friends. We planned our last evening away with his friends, which I helped to madly coordinate via text on the way home. They aren't just his friends, they're our friends. Friends who have become family. During this experience they've all visited, helped, asked, offered, been there. They are my family too. I know why they are so important to him. Oddly, I ran into another very special friend while we were out as well, a previous coworker-I actually almost asked to join us!  It was just fortuitous, as I move forward and realize the people who really made an effort that didn't even know me very well.

I'd like to tell you this is all over, I can tell you that I got good EEG results. Yay! But, there's a little more to the story, and I don't even know what that is yet.  Just know that I am always working on it, I'm truly finding peace in my everyday.

When we were "hiking" in Starved Rock, there was one thing I noticed during our walks surrounded in nature. (I shared this with my husband, but sometimes I think he thinks I've lost my mind a little sitting at home, all in my head getting all spiritual and growing and stuff.)  Here's what I realized: all of the plant life, the flowers and trees that were dead there, (I was looking at them all on the first day of spring), all of those dead leaves that were there under the piles of snow that have now resurfaced. Everything was laying there just waiting. It's all been in waiting mode, waiting to come back. It's been building back up-gearing up for the next stage. Some of the plants won't come back at all, they will die, they won't have enough life to make it. Some of them won't be strong enough. But some of them, somehow, will be stronger than ever, brighter than ever, greener than ever, and bolder than ever.  The winter will have done nothing to stop them from being more than than they were before the winter came...

This is what I aspire to be.

Trading Spaces with TLC

If you've been following my story, I'm still waiting for results from an EEG. I'm hoping that those results will prove that I am on the right track. That will be really, really good news, and it's the only news I'm planning on getting :)  I should know something more some time this week or next. So we've been passing the time...

We recently moved my son into a new room.

We realized a few weeks ago that when my husband got up for work, even with the white noise machine we continued to use from when Brock was an infant, Brock still had trouble sleeping while Randy was getting ready in the mornings.

So the 7AM wake ups were turning into 6:45AM wake ups, then 6:30AM wake ups, 6:15AM...you get the idea. Well, his bedroom is located directly next to ours and also backs up next to our TV. Now that he's become a "light sleeper" we figured it was time to move him into a room that's a little farther away and also a little bigger. We figured it would make it a little easier for us to move around. When we approached this project we noticed there were several things in his room that were dirty and needed repair and/or clean-up. And the glider, oh the glider!  Its the glider we first gently and lovingly rocked our newborn baby boy in. Recently, it had several screws that popped out. This continued week after week for the last couple of months. The thing had become a death trap, I'm not sure why we risked our lives slowly rocking our son and ourselves night after night in a soft and sweet milk-drinking Russian roulette of a chair...but we chanced it. It was past time to throw it out.

But trading spaces was going to be a huge challenge. When we moved into our new home we (I) wanted a "very important" office to do my "very important" office work at home. Most of which I ended up doing on my laptop in my bed at all hours of the night. The desk kind of ended up being a mistake.  Have you ever worked so hard and long on your laptop in bed that your legs get really hot and your sheets stick to you and your laptop becomes a fiery furnace of pain?  You'd think I'd walk the 30 feet over to the giant 1,000 lb desk we bought a year ago, but instead I tortured myself with budgets and branded my self with the backside of a Toshiba.

So, we knew we wanted to move him, but that desk sort of sat there like this ominous L-shaped impossible task. We knew we had to take it apart but were afraid to...

So we waited.

Finally, we decided it was time. We had enough of the early wake ups and the glider had become crooked, it didn't rock anymore and I think even the baby was afraid. Plus Randy's mom had to put him to bed one night and it was bad enough we subjected ourselves to the death trap but we really didn't want to risk anyone else's life, so it was time.

We started Sesame Street one afternoon and just like anything else we faced together Randy and I approached it completely differently. I wanted to draw a diagram and move things 1 by 1 and figure out where each piece was going to go and Randy just wanted to move things and force them into spaces by trial and error and brute force. Randy won out. But I got to take apart the desk.

I won't bore you with the rest of the details, but I will say that like a lot of things in life, it was all much easier than we expected. The desk was 4 screws. We did have to take both doors off the hinges but we easily slid the desk right into the other room.

When his old room was empty, it was dirty. But (just like a sentimental mother would say) I said to Randy, "Remember when we imagined a baby in here? Remember how nervous we were? How scared?"  I remembered that the room was a different color, there were no curtains to darken the room, there were no decals on the wall, no contraptions for holding diapers or hanging pictures.  Everything in the room had no purpose before. Somehow, haphazardly as new parents, we made it all work perfectly. Now I couldn't imagine the room for any other purpose, even with it empty.

Then we moved his furniture into the new room.  It seemed an odd, almost uncomfortable. It was a bigger space and had more room for things, but awkward. Once we moved his furniture around we noticed that some of it was weak in some spots, it needed to be tightened, we hadn't noticed this before, until they were moved around. Also, some of the pictures and figurines didn't make sense in the new room, so they didn't make it in and some of the things on the wall didn't go either.  But the core items moved. They started to make more sense in the new room, actually they made more sense in the new room than in the old room and new ideas started to fill my head about his future, how his crib would become a toddler bed in that room and then a double bed and then I could imagine a chest of drawers. I could imagine a boy seated at a desk doing his homework and that sweet babbling voice would say words and full sentences. The boy would grow here...and it all fell into place and it all made sense.

When Brock took his first nap in his new room (you guessed it) he did not like it. He hated it!!!  And I think Randy would have preferred that I shut the door and let him cry and let him get used to it. But, instead, I picked him up and I comforted him. I walked him around and I told him, "This is yours, all of this is yours, this is your crib, these are your clothes, these are your toys, your changing table, your books."I'm not going to say, he completely stopped crying and went right to sleep, that would be a lie. But there was a peace that came over him when I was explaining and he saw his things around the room. As much peace as a 1 year old can have...

When his room was empty it made me think back to all of the possibility I had when I moved back to the suburbs. I remember being scared. I remember being worried, having absolutely no idea how any of this would work out. I was pregnant, about to start a very big job. Just like the pieces of his room and the colors on the wall, once I was there, it all fit, it all made sense, it all became perfect in a way I could never have predicted. Even the decals on Brock's walls, at first I didn't like them, Randy wanted them, but when I peeled them off, it was difficult, I had grown attached, but after I started peeling the first or second one I couldn't wait to get rid of them all.

Whenever you move furniture I find that it weakens it. The hinges, the nuts and bolts. The legs on chairs and tables. I feel the same way about some changes in life. I think that when we go through a major change there are parts of us that get worn, there are pieces and joints that get damaged, little scrapes and scars that we try to cover up with wood markers and couch material patches, but not everything can be covered. At the same time, we find some weaknesses that we can repair, some extra parts that we DO figure out where they go, some nuts and bolts that DO tighten things up, some furniture and tables and chairs that we CAN make stronger. And I think that change can do this too.

I've been told by some very intelligent people that I thrive during change, that I am unafraid of change. And if that is true then this has been quite the test. I've fought this change, much like Brock cried and screamed when I put him down for a nap in his new room. Worse! I've been kicking and screaming, yelling, getting tattoos, scrambling for any source of comfort except for comfort in the fact that I am weak and broken and that I can be completely taken apart and then rebuilt. And at the same time, that core, those core pieces remained.  And God new that the whole time...

I didn't want to see it. My heart never really changed. I think I was scared I would change. Through all of this there were things that were not going to make it, pictures that weren't going to get hung up on the wall in the new life (friends that may not continue on with me), there were things that needed to get repaired, screws tightened (flaws that needed to be revealed to me, changes that needed to be made), room for new pictures (new friends, or friends from the past that were coming back into my life), the glider that was going to get thrown out (the job I was going to lose). In the new room, in my new possibility, there is a vision for a new start, just like I had when I moved to the suburbs 3 months pregnant in July of 2013 full of hope and possibility and still very much afraid. God was/is there holding my hand walking me around showing me all of the ways I am blessed even on the days I resisted and cried. I'm amazed by his grace even in my own weakness.

By the way. just in case you were wondering, Brock is sleeping soundly each night in his new room. He still wakes us up promptly around 6:30AM and the move has had no impact on the early morning wake ups. If you plan to stop by, feel free to bring a coffee with you!