Addison is 4 today! - Long post!!!

WOW!! Today is Addi’s fourth birthday! I can’t believe that she has been here for four years already! I can’t believe I have been out of nursing school for four years and that four years ago my life changed in so many ways in the blink of an eye. The flood of emotions that I still feel when I think about that night before she was born and the next week and even the next years are a big bunch of jumbled up feelings! Addi was suppose to be born on July 29th, one day before our anniversary, but she, God and the devil for that matter had some other plans for her! On July 8th, a surprisingly mild summer night, we went to bed with the windows open and I was awakened by a noise upstairs that I thought was Cole going to the bathroom. I got up like any mom would and went to check on him, not remembering that I walked over him to get up stairs since he was laying on the floor beside my bed. When I got upstairs and went to look in his room there was a man standing in his bedroom window with a rifle barrel through the screen. I jumped behind the wall, as fast as a 9 month pregnant woman could, screaming for my husband to get a gun. I ran down the stairs as the man ran around to the front of my house. I called 911, while Vern got the gun and headed up the stairs. He made it to the landing of the stairs as the French doors shattered and the man came into our home. The police were on their way and more importantly my dad was on his way and Cole was out of harms way were a stray bullet wouldn‘t hit him if they started flying. The man fell after hurdling my nearly six foot stair banister to the floor where my husband was able to keep him until my dad and later the police took him outside of the house before taking him off to get stitched up and to jail. Later that night after we boarded up the door and went to my parents my contractions became more regular and stronger. So off to the hospital we went. My contractions were pretty regular until someone would start to talk about the previous 5 hours and then my stress level would be so high that they would all but stop. After the doctor arrived and had a look he said that he really wasn’t comfortable with delivering her at that time because I still had a few weeks to go and had gestational diabetes so they were concerned about lung development but he would ultimately let me make the choice. So I chose to have her entry into the world forever marked by the most tragic day in my family’s lives, the day we lost our security. After about 5 hours Addison Claire arrived, everything seemed to be great. When the pediatrician came in the next morning she said we were going to stick around a few days, which wasn’t a problem since we had no house to go home to, it looked as though Addi was going to have a pretty good case of Jaundice, since she was already such a nice tan color! It just so happened that when I was running down the stairs earlier in the night and hit the wall, I had a placental tear, the placenta did not all deliver and had to be scraped out after Addi was born, thank God for that epidural! That tear caused her to have ABO incompatibility jaundice had my doctor not knowing this sent me home and I had not delivered Addi very well may have died or at the least had brain damage from her bilirubin levels being to high. Over the next few days she had an IV started, her bilirubin numbers climbed higher and higher, she wouldn’t eat and they had to put a feeding tube down to get her nutrition all while she looked like a glow worm from the two bili-blankets she was sleeping on. By the end of the week her numbers had finally peeked, only 2 points away from transfusion level, and were on the way down. We got to go home one week after she came into the world. And I do mean home, back to my old bedroom at my parents for 8 weeks while they fixed my house, not to mention until we felt like we could stay there again.

Time since then has been different in our house. Much different and not just because of the miracle of Addison but because of the change in our lives because of that night. There have been many nights when we hear the bump in the night and you freeze or the dog barks and you wonder what or who at. The nightmares still haven’t stopped, from my end, Cole’s or especially from Vern’s. We all still sleep on the same floor of the house and never leave home without personal protection or the doors locked. But time has moved on and now I can look back and I see how miraculous Addison really is. Cole had prayed for a sister, even after we had told him that it wasn’t medically possible for us to have anymore children. He still prayed for her. When we told him he was going to be a brother he wasn’t surprised. The entire time I was pregnant he told EVERYONE, including complete strangers at the grocery store, that he was responsible for that baby. That got me some weird looks! She was truly a miracle before she even made it into the world (and that is a story for another posting!). Then there was the night that made her arrival happen. I look back at that night with a measure of fear but also a measure of awe. I see how truly amazing my God is. I see his mighty hand in the whole situation. After the fact we found out that my mother-in-law had woke up praying for me just before midnight, which was when the whole incident happened. A friend of hers had called her earlier in the day and asked about me to see if I was alright because God had put me on her mind and she had been praying for my safety all day. My mother-in-law just assumed it was because of my diabetes, not because my life was at risk. But God knew and he took care of the whole situation.

My level of fear for quite sometime after the break-in was off the Richter scale, my anger still has not completely gone away, I’m working on that part, but my confidence in knowing that God is my protection and my fortress, well lets just say that I know He is the reason that my family is alive. The man who came to my house was not coming to steal anything, he was coming to take lives. My husbands first and then whoever else’s got in the way. He turned out to be my neighbor and a paranoid schizophrenic whose wife didn’t come home that night and we are pretty confident that he was convinced that she was with my husband (which could have been no further from the truth than the day is from the night). But God! I love that statement~ BUT GOD!! BUT GOD had the situation under control. BUT GOD made me wake up to a coffee cup falling off the kitchen window sill onto the counter. BUT GOD made the man fall and allowed Vern time to get up the stairs. BUT GOD already had his angels in place to fight the battle that my eyes could not see. BUT GOD had people he knew would be praying, even though they didn’t understand why. BUT GOD!!! BUT GOD saved my family - in more ways than one. Many days I have relied on Psalms 91, which hangs on my refrigerator “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. If you make the Most High your dwelling— even the LORD, who is my refuge- then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent. For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent. "Because he loves me," says the LORD, "I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation."

I have seen who my deliverer is! I know where my strength comes from and I know who my vindicator is because I see him everyday in the lives of my children and the miracle of my little girl! Happy Birthday Addi!

Have I been gone from Neverland to long?

Today I sat at home with my children watching one of my favorite childhood movies, HOOK. I enjoy family movie time and for those of you who know me at all know a good Disney or Disney themed movie would be my preference for the event! So Hook it was today. If you haven’t watched it you should and if you have then maybe a family movie night is in order for your family to watch it again.

Hook is the “adult” version of the timeless tale of Peter Pan, the boy who said he would never grow up. This version has Robin Williams as Peter and Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook, who steals Peter’s kids from the nursery in Wendy’s house and takes them off to Neverland so Peter will come back and have the war that Hook has always wanted. The only problem is Peter is no longer Peter Pan but now Peter Panning, a lawyer who has no time for anything but work, thinks that all make believe things are a waste of time and defiantly doesn’t think that Neverland is real or the stories of Peter Pan. All because he grew up. I remember when I was a child singing the Toys R Us song of “I don’t want to grow up because if I did I couldn’t be a toys r us kid.” But somewhere among the singing of the song I grew up. There is an old saying that “growing old is required but growing up is a choice” and “that you are only as old as you feel” or something like that, so why do I feel so old?

It wasn’t a choice that I consciously made, it just happened. Somewhere amidst the going to Nursing school, paying bills, doing laundry and dishes, providing transportation to piano and ball practice, cooking dinner and tucking in bed at night, I grew up. There is a line in the movie where Mr Smee tells the unbelieving Hook that Peter Panning is definitely Peter Pan but he has been away from Neverland so long that he forgot all of it. Maybe that is what happened, maybe I have been away from Neverland so long that I forgot it and all of its magic. I have forgotten. I have forgotten how to just put down the work and play. I have forgotten how to and that it is okay to leave the dishes dirty and the laundry in the basket and go outside and play. I forgot how to put down the tedious everyday things in life and play. Maybe really I have forgotten how to play at all. Maybe I have let the everyday things that seem important in life to get in the way of really living it.

I enjoy the trips that my family has taken annually to Disney for the last several years where I can go back to Neverland, where I don’t have to be an adult anymore and I can find my happy spot and live in Pan’s world. But then I find myself forgetting once again and going back to what we sadly refer to as “reality”. I don’t want to live in reality just for a little while. Just for a little while I want to live back in Neverland. I want to find my “happy place” where I can fly. Where I don’t have to do laundry and clean the house but I can find the more important things in life just that, important. I want to see that look of amazement on my kids faces just like on Peter’s kids’ faces when their Dad flies in. I want to go to Neverland, just to remember then like Peter when I go back home maybe I can keep Neverland alive in my head, not just my heart. Wanna go to Neverland with me?