How to *not* accomplish things!
School is out. Summer is here. And it's time to really get cracking on sorting, packing, and cleaning our house. Did I accomplish anything of that sort last week? Nope! What did I accomplish? Well.....I took care of 1 child and let my husband care for all the rest!
Things don't always go according to plan. Deep inside, we all know this. But it doesn't make it any easier to accept when an entire week goes by and I feel like I accomplished nothing. I'm thankful for my husband (who actually DID accomplish some things!) who keeps reminding me that I filled an important role last week.
You see, Hannah came down with Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease last week. It's a silly name for an illness, but this illness is no joke. Basically, it is a virus that mostly affects children and they develop blister-like sores on their feet, hands, and inside their mouth. There is no antibiotic cure, so all you can do is try to treat the symptoms with pain medicine until the virus has run its course. Not all kids develop the sores in all the spots. In fact, my kids have only ever gotten the sores in their mouths when they have had it (all 4 of the older kids had this illness *at the same time* when we lived in the Dalles...that was super miserable!) How painful are these sores? Well, Hannah didn't eat anything for 4 days. Yes, that is right. FOUR DAYS! I couldn't even tempt her to eat ice cream until the evening of the 4th day! Her lips were so painful that it hurt to even move them. She began to try and speak without moving her lips, and then stopped trying to speak practically at all, communicating mostly with hand gestures and squeaks. The only way I could get her to drink fluids was to give her milk or juice in a cup with a straw (swallowing hurt a little, and so water didn't tempt her at all). She wouldn't drink pain medicine from a medicine cup like normal, so we had to start putting a straw in that as well. Not that pain medicine seemed to even make that much of a difference. Even with both Tylenol and Ibuprofen in her system, she was still in so much pain. Nights were sleepless, as she woke up at least once an hour, all night long, crying from the pain. It was so hard for Gabe and I to see Hannah like that and feel so helpless to help her. I held her for long hours every day. She slept cuddled up next to me at night so that when she awoke in tears I was already right there. With Gabe home from school, I was able to be solely devoted to her care, which was a huge blessing. I'm so thankful she didn't get this illness until after school was out for the summer so my husband could take care of everything else. (He was so amazing at balancing caring for the other 5 kids and also remodeling some areas in our kitchen!)
On the day that Hannah finally began to feel better, I began to get sick. By this point, I was utterly exhausted so it is no surprise that my own immune system had weakened. I began to develop a fever and stomach pain. For over 2 days I battled "the runs" before my stomach began to improve. I had one really good day and then I started to come down with a cold. I'm on day 2 of a sore throat now and trying not to be discouraged at my health. I'm grateful that Hannah has completely recovered by now and is back to her normal self, but wishing I had more energy to tackle the things on my to-do list. We still have 5 weeks before we leave, but those 5 weeks are going to go by in a blur and I want to be as prepared as possible before the last week hits. But, not my will but Thine be done. I know that none of this was a surprise to God. And He did sustain me through those long, hard days with Hannah. Maybe this is God's way of forcing me to rest a bit following such a hard week (I know I need it, it's just not always easy to take the time to rest when there is so much else to be done!)
While it would be easy for me to sit here and be discouraged and lament all the things that I didn't get done last week, I'm going to intentionally list out some of the things that Gabe accomplished and the other "stuff" that has fallen into place in the past week and half. Gabe set up the pool for our kids (which included patching an area that had accidentally torn when taking it down last summer. He removed our non-working vent above the stove and replaced it with an above stove microwave. This microwave allows us more counter space in the kitchen, so Gabe then took out our old microwave, cleaned and reorganized our counter tops. We wanted to replace the fridge in our kitchen with a newer fridge we were given from my parent's recent kitchen remodel (the new fridge has a water/ice dispenser built in), so he pulled the old fridge out from the wall, cleaned out from under it, and put the new fridge in its place. He has mowed plenty of grass, bought plants for our garden, and completed two dump runs. (I'm pretty sure I married superman!) In addition to all that, we have lined up renters for our house when we leave (what a huge relief!) So there is plenty of good that happened last week. I have much to be thankful for!
I hope everyone else has had a good start to their summer. If you were praying for our family during the time of Hannah's sickness (or mine), we very much thank you for your prayers. We are blessed with a great network of family and friends to lift us up when we are struggling. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
