Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! This is our first Easter with a diabetic child. All morning I was worried about my baby, not her! He hasn't been hungry, has been thirsty and soaked through his diaper!! But then we got home from church, he perked up a bit. ate lunch and is now sleeping. I can't bring myself to test him afraid for what I might find. so for now...I will watch diligently! But our sweetie has done well.

Their Easter baskets were filled with books and sidewalk chalk, a few jelly beans 1.5 grams each.

I bought us (parents) whoppers for private consumption.

We will be having a ham dinner later. Should be great!

Gave a hug to our mom friend that lost her son just weeks ago still. she said her husband isn't sure he wants to do much today but they are still an amazing testimony. They have clung to God through this unbearable time and are triumphing.

Easter is very special to me because I gave my life to Christ on an Easter Sunday ten years ago. Every sunday I had gone to church and silently said "yes" to the pastor when he offered for us to accept Jesus but was never brave enough to come forward. It was a big step for me.

I had just come back from India. we had lived out of a few suitcases for six months. we had taught our daughter about Siva and Ganesh and had even made a shrine to the Hindu gods in our room. I was married but insisted on keeping my independence. I was very liberal in my thinking.

I had been raised in a church but decided that I didn't need any of an organized religion. I had studied lots on Buddhism while in college and in India and felt that made the most sense.

well, now sitting in my parent's new church and listening to the sermons, something stirred inside of me and spoke to me. Suddenly, nothing mattered. God was grabbing a hold of me and I couldn't deny it. He began to work in my daughter's life, my life and later my husbands.

Easter Sunday, the service was held on the church's lawn under a huge canopy. testimony after testimony was given and I wanted to go up front and plead for forgiveness but still was too embarrassed to do so. Finally the time was up to go forward and someone began to sing a song. I hesitantly stood up and walked down the side of the aisle and went up to someone and said that I wanted to be prayed with. They handed me to the pastor's wife. She began to pray for me and guided me on what to pray. I suddenly felt like Peter who had denied Christ. I was raised in a church but had rejected it. I suddenly felt so repentant. I began to cry. I was so ashamed.

I felt like a changed person. brand new. my vision was different. I remember a month later I went to a meeting about an upcoming Harvest Crusade in our city and I remember looking around the room in awe that I was among fellow believers.

Every year, those feelings of a new come back as we approach Easter. There is a special song by the Newsboys called "Amazing Love" that was played back then and I could never get through the whole song without crying. That song is listed on my player with this blog.

so, Happy Easter. God has blessed us and brought us through many things over the years, including an Easter with a resurrected daughter newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Praise be to God, Halleluah! Praise ye the Lord!

highs and strong wills

I figured out today that when she is high, she also acts like when she is low.

I took her into her speech class and when she was done, the teacher said that she was getting more comfortable because she was starting to explore around the room. ie. get into everything.

I checked her, she was a little high. but it was snack time so I gave her a snack.

we then went to pick up her sister from school. while we waited outside the classroom for my daughter, our sweetie couldn't stand still. she wanted into the classroom to play with the dollhouse that she discovered last visit. she managed to sneek into the room past the teacher and began to pull out dollhouse furniture and arrange it in the dollhouse. I went over to her and said that couldn't play with the toys right now. she did not want to leave!

I ended up picking her up and carrying her out. she then reached from my arms and grabbed the classroom door and held on!!

I pried her hands off.

My other daughter was finally dismissed and we began to walk back to the car.

Our sweetie couldn't just hold a hand and walk. she was running all over the place and picking everything up off the ground that she found.

she is 3.

finally made it to the car and got home.

then as we entered the front door, she began crying about something that she wanted and couldn't have right away. I had her sit down at her little table with her brother and sister and got snacks. she then began to cry about the snack.

boundaries?

typical 3 year old antics?

I took her to her room to calm down and then she walked back out and in between sniffles, sobs, said she would contain herself.

Is she low?

I test her and see that she is over 400!

the granola bar from earlier! no insulin.

I give her some crackers and milk and insulin for an adjustment shot and the extra carbs.

Later, we are hanging out in the back yard and everything is calm again. I look into the house and their my sweetie is sitting at her little table completely engrossed in her paper doll set. quietly playing and arranging and happy self again.

yes she is 3. yes she is strong willed. but I do think there is a correlation to her loss of self control and sudden moodiness and her highs.

because what a difference once she was fed and brought down.

she has been having lots of highs and I like the advice of our diabetic neighbor. He said to calculate and give insulin right before food or as she begins to eat to try to avoid so many ups and downs. In the hospital we were shown to wait to give insulin til we knew what she was going to completely eat but as I watch more and give insulin upfront, it does seem to keep her lower and more even.

I was also worried after several lows and lows at midnight that I was purposefully keeping her high because I was afraid of turning around and finding her low again.

But now I see that the highs are affecting her too. and worrisome.

all in the balancing act.

Life's a big circus.

on a constant tight rope.

and tonight when she went to bed. she wanted milk, then more milk, then crackers, then more crackers, then soymilk! I thought for sure she would be in the 400's at midnight. she was 220!

go figure.

a medical bracelet

a need we have...is an engraved medical bracelet for out daughter. They have really cute little girl ones at www.laurenshope.com or anything else comparable. We haven't been able to set aside the money for one yet and really should have one.

a box full of hope

Last night, we opened our front door to head out to do errands, when we discovered that a huge brown box was sitting on our doorstep. It was called a "hope box" or "hope bag" that is put together by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund for newly diagnosed children with type 1 diabetes.

In the box was a little teddy bear named Rufus that also has type 1 diabetes. Our sweetie was so excited to receive him and enjoys checking his blood sugar levels now too. In the box, came an extra checking device so that is her teddy bears for now.

We also received a video of other kids talking about life with diabetes. This video is only 10 minutes long, but she enjoys watching it over and over, to see kids just like her.

It is nice that boxes like this arrive on your doorstep. so much of life keeps carrying on and diabetes has become a side show. She gets checked constantly and fed food at certain times. sometimes she is made to eat candy and sometimes we have to hide candy from her.

But this box allowed her to be validated. Suddenly diabetes took the center stage for her in a good way. She was embraced and shown that others know what she is going through too.

When my six year old had broken her leg and was in a body cast, our home nurse brought her a huge teddy bear named Zeep that also had a cast on his leg. and the day that she was able to get her cast off; of course Zeep got his off too.

I'm so happy for our daughter to be celebrated at long last and loved and embraced WITH her diabetes. It's not a "condition" anymore, its part of who she is and that can make her special.

I must say though; going through the box, picking up literature after carb counting book, after insulated totebag, I did fight back tears. It's bittersweet. Happy for her, but reality check for us.

MY daughter has diabetes.

I was discussing with another mom how some people just don't get the seriousness of juvenile diabetes. How some people assume that soon it will just be under control and life will continue as it was. I think a lot of that is because we hear the term "diabetes" a lot in our society. We hear "gestational diabetes"; type 2 diabetes. The problem is; these are very different than type 1 diabetes.

Insulin dependent juvenile diabetes.

It's not a matter of just not eating sugar. Or a matter that diet and exercise will fix. This is a matter of her pancreas has stopped working. This is a matter of when she was diagnosed, her kidneys had stopped working too. If her body can't process sugar and it isn't caught, she can die. She was dying when she was diagnosed.

This is a matter of writing down every single thing she eats and playing a balancing game every day for the rest of her life trying to match her body and food she eats with insulin. If her blood sugar drops too low, she can go into a coma. If it goes too high, her body starts producing acid that is toxic and causes the kidneys to stop working again.

We walk with a seriousness that we must be in control of 24 hours everyday. Some people think that it is no big deal. We know that it is a very big deal.

Thank goodness for organizations like JDRF that help try to celebrate the new normal in the middle of the heavy cloud that we carry.

Grief

It is grief. Grief: the mourning of a lost one.

I don't know the official definition, I don't want to take the time to look it up. But it is suffering, the absence of, the wanting them back, the pain, the why's?, the utter disdain...

despair...

we all feel grief. we can grieve the loss of a television show, we can grieve the move of a close friend, we can grieve the loss of health with a diagnosis, we can grieve the loss of a loved one.

Are we to judge the degree of grief?

I felt inadequate, almost hurtful or prideful, telling the father that just lost his son, that I feel his pain. He could say with anger that "You still have your children to hug everynight!" But he won't. He is far too composed for that.

But I did feel inadequate. I don't want to be disrespectful but I can feel a loss and put myself in his place, I know what it's like to not be able to share my newly developed film to my eagerly awaiting Dad. I have all of my kids still, praise God, but I have had several moments of mortality in the last several years. so many.

When we lose something that we treasure, we lose a piece of ourselves with it. that moment that we used to be able to pull out of the box and hold in our hand and caress it and look at it and notice every nook and cranny in it. we could then put it back in the box for the next time, until that box disappears. Then, we miss our item in the box but we also long for that comfort again, that experience, that joy that it brought us. It can't be duplicated, even with an object similar to it, its not the same.

We see this in the movie "Lord of the Rings". The little shriveled man that doesn't really resemble a man anymore. Gollum. disfigured and full of greed and envy and malice because his precious ring was lost or taken or coveted. His loss has disfigured him. He killed for that item and it destroyed him. He is no longer recognizable.

So how do we avoid becoming disfigured by grief?

We fondly remember our item or person or loss. We keep it alive as our cherished memory. we honor it. we talk about it. we celebrate it. Life keeps ticking on. the train never stops. experiences change everyday. If we hung on to that box forever, eventually we would set it down and forget it. to find it dusty and hidden behind books one day. for our lives carry on.

Just as Frodo had to give up the precious item to save himself. He could have kept it as it looked great around his neck. He could have trusted Gollum and perished with his greed. He could have thrown away his mission and disappeared to covet this new item all by himself.

But Frodo knew that it was a gift that had been given to him. He knew that with this gift he had a great responsibility. He knew that he must think about the best for everyone, not just himself as he carried this ring. He knew that their would be struggles and demons to overcome but he knew that by releasing it, it would set everyone else free too.

Like Jesus? sacrificing his own will and desires for the benefit of all mankind?

We must welcome grief as a chance to be like Jesus. To mourn the loss of what could have been for what it can be.

We all experience pain and loss. we are all affected by each other's tragedies. we know what it means to get a flat tire, to lose your car keys, to have a panicked moment of where your child is, to having that dreaded phone call. It may be your brother, your father, your husband, or your son, but we are all human and we all share the same fragile experience of life.

we must stay focused on the higher creator, the Lord, God, to keep giving us direction, and comfort, and our plans so that we can keep going forward according to his will and not ours.

you say tomato, I say tomato

some call it tomatoes and some call it tomatoes. we received a huge blessing two days ago. I wasn't expecting it but I had always hoped that God would come through some how.

Our oldest daughter attended this great private school that I wanted my second oldest to attend. By the time our 6 year old was ready to attend though, we couldn't afford it.

We decided this year to homeschool her while we figured out what to do next. She was a young kindergartner and could easily use a year of kindergarten again. She had also missed a lot of preschool due to her broken leg when she was three. She has always been hesitant in new situations and needed some speech intervention. In a nutshell, she needed a break. So God provided it by us needing to decide on homeschooling.

We were able to do a lot academically over this past year. She had lots of play time with her younger siblings. We have an amazing backyard so they never had a shortage of play area. But I was feeling more tied down with four little ones by myself a lot. Trying to be part of homeschooling groups and do field trips and park days with friends was sounding like too much. If I had help, I could do it but that wasn't often enough.

Then our 3 year old was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. This shook our world. Our foundation is strong but we never dreamed that that was a possibility. Suddenly, we were down in a hospital for several days and realizing the mortality of our children.

We have gotten into a routine with our sweetie. There are still lots of ups and downs and I still need to consult with the doctor, but in general we are carrying on.

Our twins have also needed speech services for a year now and I have been working on the process of getting them evaluated and approved and set up for services. This was a long process and finally they began classes this week! It seemed that it was now the time for our 6 year old daughter to get back into a classroom with kids her own age.

We still couldn't afford it but I explored other public school options and they were all full for the remainder of the year. It seemed that the answer was still pointing back to our first choice.

I shared my findings and our current situation with someone that wishes to remain anonymous, but she said that she felt she had no other choice but to help us!

Praise God!

She is not quite sure that God is doing the blessing here but we know that God has blessed us through her. We have prayed about this decision for months and months and months. and God can use whomever he wishes in whichever way he wishes.

We are so thankful for this blessing and feel that some burden has been lifted. We needed some extra help and relief and this meets my children's needs.

some look at this world as a random act of coincidences, we see it as all in God's timing.