Last week.  Oh, last week.

We all just felt like we were barely holding on.  But we made it.  We made it.

Isaiah did his semi-retreat tonight as we readied him for bed and prepared for tomorrow at the hospital.  But he had just had a really, really normal sort of day, and it wasn’t more than a minute or so and he settled in for sleep  This weekend just got better and better.  We slept, ate, played, caught up on some schoolwork.  Stephen’s back is even unknotting little by little.

So thankful to head into this week feeling like we have a bit of margin.  Hoping that when he realizes that he won’t be having surgery, just cast changes and brace fittings, he’ll settle in to his routine there.  His routine involves a lot of unhappiness, but it is familiar by now and hopefully he’ll be able to process that.

The other kids are really doing so much better.  Colds have passed. Play has resumed and they are talking about things they want to do. All good things.

Surgery weeks are always tough but this one seemed to pile it on, but we weren’t alone.  I have been so thankful for friends and family who came alongside us these past days.  You all mean so much to us.  When we felt at our most exhausted and stretched, you kept us focused on the fact that we weren’t walking through this alone.

Please keep on praying for Isaiah’s heart.  While his body seems like the most vulnerable part of him, his sensitive spirit is struggling to hold on.

My prayer this week has been thankfulness for God’s care for my little boy.  Just like Mephibosheth, God hasn’t forgotten my Isaiah. Not for one day of his life. He took a little boy from a rural area in China and brought him through a series of seemingly random events to a family in Canada, and is being treated by two of the foremost teams of specialists for his arthrogryposis in the whole world.  How can I doubt His care for me too?  His goodness in our exhaustion? His tenderness in my need to control?  And for those scholars out there that would like to point out the fact that this passage illustrates a common middle eastern tradition of restitution, that is true. But to me, he was a man whom everyone had forgotten.  Maybe even, Mephibosheth, thought he was forgotten.  But he didn’t escape God’s notice.  Nope. he was brought to the forefront of the king’s household and cared for with honour for the rest of his life.  I take so much joy in these words.  God knows our needs.  We aren’t journeying alone through life.  As long as we draw breath, His eye is on us and our story is not over.  Good stuff to contemplate, yes?

2 Samuel (2 Samuel 9:1-13):

9 David asked, “Is there anyone still left of the house of Saul to whom I can show kindness for Jonathan’s sake?”

2 Now there was a servant of Saul’s household named Ziba. They summoned him to appear before David, and the king said to him, “Are you Ziba?”

“At your service,” he replied.

3 The king asked, “Is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?”

Ziba answered the king, “There is still a son of Jonathan; he is lame in both feet.”

4 “Where is he?” the king asked.

Ziba answered, “He is at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar.”

5 So King David had him brought from Lo Debar, from the house of Makir son of Ammiel.

6 When Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, he bowed down to pay him honor.

David said, “Mephibosheth!”

“At your service,” he replied.

7 “Don’t be afraid,” David said to him, “for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”

8 Mephibosheth bowed down and said, “What is your servant, that you should notice a dead dog like me?”

9 Then the king summoned Ziba, Saul’s steward, and said to him, “I have given your master’s grandson everything that belonged to Saul and his family. 10 You and your sons and your servants are to farm the land for him and bring in the crops, so that your master’s grandson may be provided for. And Mephibosheth, grandson of your master, will always eat at my table.” (Now Ziba had fifteen sons and twenty servants.)

11 Then Ziba said to the king, “Your servant will do whatever my lord the king commands his servant to do.” So Mephibosheth ate at David’s[a] table like one of the king’s sons.

12 Mephibosheth had a young son named Mika, and all the members of Ziba’s household were servants of Mephibosheth. 13 And Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, because he always ate at the king’s table; he was lame in both feet.

We head out around 4:30 tomorrow morning for Isaiah’s tenotomies (achilles heel releases and possibly hip tendon releases – to be decided in the OR). We are blessed that our doctor decided to do it at 7:30pm last night and has him booked in first thing Wednesday morning.This is what we came for, so onward we go.

Things to pray for?

Peace. That we would receive the peace that God has waiting for us. We are not doing so great at receiving. It’s a moment by moment act of the will, and well, that doesn’t sound too peaceful does it?

Isaiah. He has a lot of bruising on his feet. The casting is getting tougher and tougher.  He is fighting even me now. I’m his soft spot and he’s stopped receiving comfort on my terms.  I have to hold the line with him while pouring on the compassion.  (No one slept ALL night last night.)  His heel bones have always been really, really high, making his heel pads super soft and spongy.  This will allow his heel bone to drop and gain flexion on his foot pad.  His tenotomies were not successful in China and we knew we had to go with this type of procedure versus the one offered to us in Portland in order to try to prevent irreparable damage, but it is still risky because of the prior failures.  We are believing God’s care over Isaiah.  He is so precious to Him and we are doing the best we can as parents to choose wisely, but at the end of it all, it is up to God as to His plan for Isaiah’s walking.  Of course we ask and believe that he may walk here on earth, but if not in the now it does not lessen his importance to God.  We can’t explain all of this to him and it is tough to see him feeling betrayed when he begs me to make it stop.  I choose to accept God’s care for him in this.  It’s too big for me to try and process on my own.

Stephen.  He has back trouble from a multitude of things in his teens, but the stress and long hours driving has blown it to pieces.  He spent last night on the floor.  He’s just spent the past couple hours at urgent care and now he’ll be on meds so strong that he can not drive for the next week.  He’s frustrated, in agony and tired and there have been headaches at work.  On the plus side, I found us a network chiropractor nearby.  We’ll give that a try tomorrow.

The kids as a herd.  They are managing to zone out on copious amounts of screen time.  We catch schoolwork as we can and try to offer options for something other than a screen.  Reality is though, they are tired of it all but the least affected because, hey!, what’s not to like about screens? For now.  Perhaps I need prayer that this enjoyment will last until we get a breather.  This is only a season has become my chant.

James.  Trying to cover for us as we run hither and yon.  Also trying to keep up with his college courses.  It’s a lot.  He’s tired.

Faith.  She tends towards internalizing her stress at the best of times.  She has had a bump in her back reappear.  It is the same bump that she had as an infant and the one my brother-in-law (a network chiropractor) fixed when she was tiny.  She’s hurting.  hopeful that the chiropractor can offer some help tomorrow.

Grace, Garnet and Samuel.  They are doing really well.  Okay, they are exhausted from not sleeping last night and they are getting over their colds, but they are doing well at their schoolwork and enjoying the downtime.  We have to keep drawing them out when we get home, but overall they have done alright considering the upheaval.

Colds.  Each of us has had one form or the other.  I’ve been chugging greens and Achillea, but the rest of the family turns their nose up at them.  I was smugly healthy, but started the ay with quite a scratchy throat.  So far so good.  I’ll keep on with the Achillea.

And me.  I’m nervous about driving into the city for the surgery tomorrow.  I have a feeling the ride home will be tough.  I will probably ask James to come with and try to help Isaiah on the way back to the house.  They will do his casting post surgery while he is under, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be happy on his way home.  The traffic is so much more aggressive here.  I am thankful we drive a tank, but the speeds are always higher than posted (120-140 miles per hour).  And people don’t often signal.  And they tailgate.  A lot.  Saying this stuff, giving it over to God to deal with and choosing to accept His peace instead of the anxiety.

Just keeping it very, very real.