Last month, we learned that my dh has multiple nodules in both of his lungs.  We don't know exactly what we are dealing with yet, and the doctor is waiting to do a follow up CT scan in a couple of months, so until then we are waiting on the Lord.  We received this news a week after my mother had her fourth heart attack this year.  Once again, we are spending a lot of time at hospitals.  Since my natural gifting isn't mercy, I have to wonder why the Lord keeps bringing me back to sickbeds.  Maybe he's trying to teach me something?!?! 

Somehow we have managed to stay on top of of our school schedule, for the most part, only leaving a few minor things out here and there.  We are also continuing to do vision therapy and sensory integration therapy at home each day.  The Lord has been very good to us, because we have taken several trips to the lake in the last month, where we have a place to stay (for free!) whenever we want.  We take our own food, so we only pay for gas and have a nice, cheap family get-away.  The weather has still been pretty and I am glad that after the 100 degree heat we had this summer, the Lord has finally brought us cooler but reasonable temperatures.  Our lakehouse is right next door to a National Recreation & Wildlife area, so it has been wonderful to enjoy nature and hiking with the kids.  We want to enjoy as much time together as a family before we have to face whatever we are dealing with regarding my dh. 

Tonight my dh and I had a discussion about priorities.  I am managing to stay on top of the cooking, laundry, grocery shopping, errands, homeschooling and all of the medical appointments, but somehow the housework is slipping--badly.  I tend to be a perfectionist and I am no longer comfortable in my own home.  I also feel like my two younger children are being shortchanged in all of this.  My dh graciously discussed ways we could cut back on our homeschooling schedule without doing away with it entirely.  We want to do school as much as possible now, in case things get worse down the road and we have to take a break for awhile.

Hopefully, we will find the right balance.  God is good.  May he cover us with his peace and his grace as we wait on Him and finish the race he has given us to run.

Have any of you ever read that book "If You Give A Mouse a Cookie"?  This is my life, multiplied by four (dh plus three dc).  The hard part is that my dh is part of the "mouse a cookie" problem.  The Lord has been trying to teach me to be less controlling and inflexible, I know, and he has used my "mouse a cookie" family as his primary teaching tool.  At the end of the day, I am just like this poor exhausted boy in the story, running around trying to keep the mouse under control, when it all started with a cookie.  It would be easier if dh realized this was a problem, and backed me up on setting some guidelines, but, since he doesn't, I've decided to allow chaos to rule, since I'm not going to battle with dh on this issue anymore.  It's been stressful for me, to say the least, because I am highly visual and can't stand clutter and half-done projects everywhere, but nonetheless, I will accept it as the Lord's will for my life right now. 

Recently we discovered that our oldest child, Eenie, has sensory integration dysfunction (SID).  This is a pretty generic term whose symptoms can look different in different people.  What is SID?  SID occurs when the central nervous system has problems in taking in sensory information (the five senses plus movement and spatial sense), processing the sensory information, or responding to the information taken in through the senses (which is basically all information).  In essence, the central nervous system short-circuits. 

In the case of Eenie, she is hyposensitive to touch.  She touches everything and everybody, and is constantly on the move.  Yet, she can't stand other people touching her.  She is very distracted visually and auditorally, yet her vision issues are serious enough to cause difficulty with reading.  Such a contradiction.  She can be overly sensitive to criticism.  She is hyperactive, distractible, but highly intelligent and has very advanced language skills. 

I have always known she was different, but I have chosen to believe that it was a personality issue.  She is like her father (who also has SID), and that reinforced my belief that everything would work out OK.  Yet, he has struggled through life.  He is a happy well-adjusted adult, who holds down a good job.  But, things have always been harder for him than they are for other people.  We've decided we would like to try and see what we can do for Eenie while her brain and nervous system are still young enough to be malleable.

Now that we know the problem, we are going to consult an occupation therapist (OT) and see what type of therapy we can do at home for Eenie.  Part of her vision therapy may help, but we also want to be senstive on the home front.  I am partway through the book The Out-of-Sync Child, and it has been enlightening.  I am learning things about my daughter (and my husband) that I've never understood (and probably never will, in some ways).  There are so many changes I feel that I need to make, but I know I can't do it all at once.  I pray that the Holy Spirit will give me direction and prioritize things for me, so that I am not overwhelmed. 

Since Monday night, my 5-year old nephew has been in the hospital, and we have had our 7-year old niece with us.  For over a year now, my nephew has fought a battle with leukemia.  He has been through so much and was doing so well, and it has become easier and easier to feel that he is "safe".  After celebrating his 5th birthday the 2nd week of June, we were all rejoicing over his survival.  However, after being sick for a few days, Monday night, he was taken to the hospital with an unidentified infection.  He has virtually no white count, so his body has no way to fight whatever is attacking it.  Please pray for him, if you think of it. 

When he got first got sick (last year), the whole family rallied around him, lavishing time, attention and gifts on him.  It was a hard fight, at first, and we didn't know if he would make it.  Although we tried hard not to exclude his sister and made an effort to give her an equal share of time and attention, understandably, it was inadequate in her eyes.

Having her here the last few days, it has become apparent to me that she has some serious needs.  She is a sweet little girl, but she is hurting.  She'll be repeating first grade again next year, and I can't imagine what that is doing to her self-esteem.  The homework they loaded on her, added to the fact that her parents were spending so much time dealing with her younger brother made it impossible for her to succeed in public school.  I would love to homeschool her, or see her mother do it, but I don't really believe it would possible right now, for a number of reasons (among them being that her parents are divorced). 

If it is not God's will for us to be the ones ministering to her, I pray that God will bring someone else into her life.  But my wish is that God will show me some way to help her, both while she is staying with us and after she goes home.  I've been busy with my own family this year, and haven't made the time for her that I should have.   This could be blamed on a number of things, but bottom line is that here is a ministry opportunity in my own family.  Hopefully, I can rise to the occasion.

Yesterday is one of those days, I wish I could do over again, but I guess the Lord wants me to learn the lessons from it instead.  We never did do school yesterday, so I guess at least for yesterday, the kids got a reprieve.  After going to the lake the last two weekends (whooping cough is going around church, so we figured we might as well), the house needed a little TLC.  While I was dealing my 15 loads of laundry   and cleaning the bathroom, my son somehow managed to break the door to our DVD player, unbeknownst to me.  When dh came in from work, I was putting the finishing touches on the bathroom, and the first thing he notices is that the DVD player is broken.  Being the mechanic that he is, he unplugs it and proceeds to fix it (he really is very handy to have around ).  However, when he went to plug it back into the back of the TV, our son was trying to use his "tools" and help his dad with the job.  I'm still not sure exactly what happened (and I DO NOT plan to ask), but somehow, the TV ended up smashed in pieces on the floor.  Yep, it's broke  .  Not such a tragedy for me, but dh and the children were heartbroken over it.  The children were scared and crying and the scene was just awful.  Unfortunately, I just purchased MUS a month ago (at quite a hefty investment but well worth the price), which of course requires the use of a TV and DVD player.  My dh is trying to convince me that, rather than moving the smaller TV from the bedroom to the living room, we can play the DVD's in our computer.  I am not overly fond of this idea, because we still can't play any videos and many times I need to be on the computer while they are watching their school on TV.  I have also used many of the great educational videos from the library to supplement different studies we are doing (i.e., watching one of the old-- as in Laurence Oliver--versions of Shakespeare plays as a reward after we read the play).  Also, my son loves his "construction truck" videos, and they will sometimes keep him distracted while I finish up school with dd.  When the TV broke, I immediately went to dh and asked him what I could do to help.  I did not even ask what happened (which was very out of character for me, I might add).  He did not want my help at that point, and told me to go back and finish cleaning the bathroom, which I did.  After I finished, it was apparent that he was still very upset, so I quietly got the children ready to go, and we left.  We went to MCD for the $1.49 Happy Meal night, and I took them over to Grammy's so that they could calm down and my husband could have his space to assess the situation and calm down as well.  The worst part about all of this is that I was never happy that we got the big TV in the first place, especially when my husband "redesigned" the entertainment center because the TV was too big to fit.  However, after appealing to him to reconsider, I accepted it and we moved on, and I made good use of it for our homeschool.  But, now, dh thinks that God allowed this to happen since he went against my counsel, so now that the TV is broken, it is an issue between us.  I have wised up alot over the last few years, and I did not say "I told you so", but he knows I told him so, and it upsets him just the same.  He commented that I should be happy now that we have no TV, and that now we can fill the space with books like I always wanted, so I know that I have hurt him.  At this point, I don't know whether to keep my mouth shut and let things blow over, try to talk to him about it, or what .  I would also like to appeal to him to move the TV from the bedroom to the front room so we can use it (since I do not allow my children to watch TV out of my presence), but perhaps that should wait a few days, until things blow over. . . .