Best-Laid Plans

       This past weekend Bruce and I had plans to fly to Nashville to see our new baby granddaughter. We haven't been away from the children for more than two nights and I even think our honeymoon was three. This was to be four nights away! Was. As we turned our phones off airplane mode they were filled with notifications of texts and calls.

       Ben, ten, had taken a bad fall, breaking both bones in his forearm. The paramedics stopped the bleeding (I won't be more graphic), had given him pain medication intravenously and were taking him to Children's Mercy Hospital. Our daughter Susanna, a nursing student, was following the ambulance.

      Even if I'd taken the very next flight back I would have missed the surgery necessary to reset his arm. Bruce and I went to see our beautiful granddaughter, and took time to formulate a plan. Holding Norah was soothing and lovely. Grandparents say that there is nothing like having a grandchild, and it is true. Sharon had flown in from Japan. Bruce stayed to visit, it was his birthday weekend. I flew back the next morning.

       Bruce has told me that there is a saying in the Army: "Planning is everything, but the plan means nothing." In other words, do have a plan--but be ready to adapt it. I don't really think the plan means nothing, so much as the plan must be flexible. We are told the Bible says not to be anxious, and I believe planning is important to that end. One must look ahead to be wise. There are verses about fools running into lions and bad folk, because they were not looking ahead and being safe.

       When I read about "preppers" I have some admiration; they are far more ready for emergencies than I. While it is wise to have food and supplies in store, and even a back-up generator, I wonder if those who have loads of firearms and supplies for a year or two might be taking it too far? I wonder. Perhaps I'm just feeling inadequate, but the attitude seems key, especially the attitude toward fellow man in need. There was a man in the Bible who stored up so much for his own household and was proud, and then promptly died. The lesson was about trusting God. Each must find his "middle-ground."

       Ben is doing well. He had a rod placed in one bone and he is in a bent-arm cast for eight weeks. He's a happy fellow. Today his teacher texted me a photo. He sat out of recess and instead taught the Kindergartners about dinosaurs. Bones heal fast in little ones. "Happiness strengthens the bones." Another Bible verse. Ben is happy so I also choose to be. I missed a weekend planned, but there will be others. I got to hold Norah, and I got to be with my Ben when he needed me.

 

A Rolling Stone...

     And another school year has begun! One homeschooling highschool senior, a junior who switched from public to parochial, four in elementary school and two in preschool! Our oldest is approaching her first wedding anniversary and lives in Alabama, our second oldest is now an Engineer working for a firm in the big city! There is no moss gathered.

     Bobby is back in Thailand and Alberto is in Mexico. I miss them terribly, my Thai and Mexican sons.  It is hard when foreign exchange students leave. They will forever be a part of our family. Bobby is working on a chance to study in Japan to learn yet a fourth language, and Alberto is finishing his senior year, happily surrounded by his family and friends.

     The livestock count has grown by a couple more dogs, five goat kids, five rescue kittens and a milk cow. I finally got my milk cow! Annabell is a Jersey due to deliver her calf and produce milk in the Spring. I am busily reading all about small cattle operations, both beef and dairy.

     Annabell was purchased from a lovely family with eleven children. They own and operate the Covenant Ranch. She is quickly winning our hearts--Marie's especially, which is funny because she was against a milk cow all this time. Annabell is just so sweet. There is something so wonderful about the sounds on the farm, especially in the morning. Now we even hear moo-ing.

     For two months we heard donkey-braying while we hosted "Jack." He was lovely. We're hoping to have two mules sometime next year (by my mare Abby and Providence Hill Farm 's mare Cheyenne)!

Life has been busily lived with so many lessons learned.

Work is in progress--both on the farm and in our souls.

God bless you,

Suzy
The Abbey Farm

Saint Who?

    
     I never used to pay attention to why cities like St. Paul, San Francisco, St. Augustine and St. Joseph were named after saints.  I was raised Episcopalian and was used to the surname; I guess I realized these people were remembered for something. People of all Christian faiths acknowlege certain early Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo and early martyrs like Stephen. When Marie and Susanna were homeschooled we used a great history text that detailed the European settling of the New World, and the different styles of the Spanish and French and others. I had not studied in such detail in public school.

     We can all acknowledge documented historical events. Of course we may interpret them somewhat differently, but it is fascinating study. Sometimes I've felt that my own geneological research, while interesting, is moderately futile. Twenty generations back and we all have close to a million ancestors--so why would one thin line of them mean anything more than another? I lost my drive for geneology, but not for history in general. As I studied them, I realized what incredible, spiritually inspiring people the saints were.

      Each city named after a saint has a good reason for it. I do not understand how people deny the Christian foundations of our country. There was tragedy involved in some cases of "religious" settling. There was horror in the case of many Native American Tribes. Man is fallible. Good intentions may not always produce the results that I think God would have wanted. Man, throughout history,  is sadly inhumane to man. So instead of focusing on the evil, I find it better to focus on what was learned and most especially what was good. The lives of saints are such stuff. Recently up for sainthood is Mother Teresa. No one would deny that hers was a heroic life. Try Googling some lesser names like these: Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein, both of whom died in concentration camps in the Holocaust. Just incredible people.

     Four years ago on July 20th,  an obscure saint became known to me. Mary Pat was prep'd in the OR, ready to have a gastrostomy tube, or "GT" inserted at five months old. A GT enters directly into the stomach through a stoma created in the abdomen, and is used for feeding. Mary Pat could not nurse. She could not suck from a bottle. All those months since she was out of the NICU we'd been managing a Nasogastric tube or "NG". That's the feeding tube that goes up into the nose and curves down the back of the pharynx, through the throat and espophagus and into the stomach. The mucous membranes are very sensitive and tender, especially in the pharynx. Insertion is at best uncomfortable to a cognizant adult. Most people describe it as intensely irritating or painful. During insertion there is a good chance of putting the tube into the lungs, rather than the stomach. As a nurse I'd inserted NG tubes so I felt at an advantage. But those were adults. And this was my tiny baby struggling for life. I prayed so hard to God to let her suck from a bottle. I pumped for six months to provide her with the best nutrition possible. I ached to nurse her, but the chance of her taking a bottle would be a miracle to me. It wasn't to be. Every time she needed the NG reinserted she screamed and cried and turned blue. I prayed and tried to be so cool and clinical. Being an RN did not make it any easier.

      Mary Pat additionally needed a procedure to tighten the top of her stomach.  She had such bad gastric reflux that one day she stopped breathing and had to be life-flighted back to the hospital. She had an apnea monitor at night which I needed to attach to leads on her chest. False alarms in the middle of the night were not uncommon.  I prayed that Mary Pat would not need any of this, but the answer I wanted did not come. We checked into the hospital and dressed Mary Pat in her tiny gown. The nurse took her and I cried as I had before her other surgeries. Mary Pat had additional difficulty with each of her surgeries when intubated, because of her cleft palate, jaw surgery and anatomy.         Dr. St. Peter was her surgeon. He was very kind and comforting. He spoke with us before the surgery and was just the confident, calming presence that I needed. Bruce and I settled in for the wait. My reading led me to the "Saint of the Day." A Feast Day is usually celebrated on the date of death of the saint...the day they entered the hereafter with Christ. This day was the feast day of St. Apollinaris.

     St. Apollinaris was the first bishop of Ravenna in the first to second century. He was a great preacher and many came to know Christ because of him. He was brutally beaten and tortured more than once by the Roman officials but he kept evangelizing and was eventually martyred. St. Apollinaris had been ordained and sent to Ravenna by St. Peter himself. St. Peter! This fact may seem in no way to be connected to Mary Pat, but I knew that in God's great love, He knew about what would happen to Mary Pat, and when St. Peter did ordain St. Apollinaris He knew that centuries later it would give comfort to a frightened mother. Mary Pat was indeed in His hands.

     Dr. St. Peter came out after the surgery to tell us that it had gone well. As we began to breathe a sigh of relief, he informed us that he encountered something serious. Because of the need for that surgery, Dr. St. Peter found a life threatening condition called a diaphragmatic hernia and expertly fixed it. He also found that her large intestine was not where it should be. Part of it was basically unattached and could have led, undetected, to a fatal condition of twisting and strangulation of the bowel. He fixed it. If God had answered my prayer and allowed her to nurse, or even to be fed from the bottle--to be spared of the NG tube and later the G-tube--these conditions could very well have killed her. I learned the beauty in unanswered prayer.

     I have a thirst for wisdom, knowledge and history that will never be quenched in this lifetime. Though eternity may be incomprehensible, thinking about getting to know all those who have gone before us--is a taste of paradise to me...

...as is Mary Pat.


God bless you,

Suzy

The Abbey Farm

On Love

March!

     I love March. It's the month of my birthday. Jim will turn 3(!) and I will turn 48(!!). My brother plays poker with some old friends from our high school; they knew me as a little tomboy in pigtails. He tells me they wryly ask him from time to time, "Your sister pregnant yet?" I really don't mind their kidding. Gosh, I'm still worth a thought in their day! And regarding all our children, I feel amazingly blessed.

     Bruce and I have heard acquaintances say that they wanted to stop having children because they'd be too old a Dad or Mom. We do feel older and we're not as active as we were when we were younger. It is harder in some ways.  I've mentioned before that I wish we had more one-on-one time with each child. But really, even if their parents are in their sixties when they graduate from high school, I don't think Jim or Margaret would consider the alternative: their lack of existence.

     I will support, or defend if you will, what I believe in when questioned. We need to in order to understand each other. My friend Bev visited a few years ago when I was pregnant with Jim. Mary Pat was less than a year old. Our family had gone through a lot with her hospitalizations and surgeries and lack of concrete answers about her prognosis. Bev understandably was concerned and asked if I was thinking things through well enough. Was this wise to be bringing another child into an already stressed situation? Was it fair to the other children? Were my decisions imposing a type of life on my family that maybe they wouldn't want and would have no say in? All were valid questions borne out of love for me. We had a great few days together. Bev and I don't necessarily agree on all aspects of religion and politics but we have a bond that I can't explain. I love her like my flesh and blood. She is my friend.

 "Iron sharpens iron, and so a friend sharpens the countenance of a friend."

     A true friend does not avoid the tough questions, or tiptoe around difficult issues. By the end of her visit Bev said something beautiful. "You know, Suz, I don't necessarily agree with what you believe, but spending this time with you I understand why you do, and I won't worry about you." I do call it beautiful, because I know Bev loves me, and she showed it. She flew a thousand miles to be at my side, to help me, and to take the time to understand. We need more of that in the world. We may not agree with each other, but we can treat each other with love and dignity. If Bev truly believed there was moral flaw in what I was doing, she would have pointed it out, but would still have continued to love me.

      I am surprised at times with the non-Christian comments I hear regarding others, on the basis of morality. The comments do not reflect Christian love. Let me say here I am not a moral relativist. I do believe in natural law and morality and God and the Bible. I don't believe in "affirming everyone in their okay-ness." God's example of love was to give totally, even to the point of coming to Earth as a baby, a man, and offering himself as a sacrifice in atonement for the sins of the whole world. Jesus taught us how to love.

      Unfortunately, we fall short far too often in modeling that love. Ghandi was once asked what he thought was the biggest obstacle to the spread of Christianity. His answer: "Christians." Many of us are familiar with the words in the hymn, "And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love; yes they'll know we are Christians by our love." Yikes. I don't think we're always great examples. I won't go into politics ‘cause I'd be blogging for days. Suffice it to say: "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." We need more politicians like Jimmy Stewart as Mr. Smith in the movie.

     We need to love more. We need to take the time to know each other and to understand each other. We may not convince or be convinced of a difference in beliefs, but to seek to understand is to love. To turn our backs and sneer or condescend is not love. Bruce came home the other day and at our traditional dinnertime "Highs and Highers," his "Higher" was "To find, in moral or political disagreements, a place of agreement somewhere and affirm that as the starting point for discussion." We can let our differences separate us, or we can build relationships of love. Idealistic, yes, and it gets pretty dicey on some issues. But no matter: we are called to love.

     Oh, part of me would love another baby in the house! I would. I am older and the body is weaker and the family is busy. I also love that I'm finally losing Margaret-baby-weight, becoming active again and finding just a little more time to spend with each child. I won't confuse selfish desires with purports of "God's Will." I will neither confuse selfish tendencies with the obstruction of it. Yes, I have a brain and will use it. I trust that like others, Bruce and I will pray about these things and decide what is best. Our family is our greatest earthly treasure.

     I look forward to my birthday! Life's been rough at times but it's been a very good life and I hope for many more years. I think of the sweet, diminuitive, elderly lady at our church. She is a widow now and moved from Italy long ago. I ask her how she is doing when I see her and she always answers the same. With a smile, and her thick accent she says, "What can I say? I'm eighty years old. I'm here! It's better than the alternative!" So, 48 isn't so bad. It's actually pretty cool. And when the Poker-Boys ask if this old gal is pregnant I'll laugh along with them. These kids are pretty downright amazing!

God bless you,

Suzy

The Abbey Farm