Another Car Accident!

This time it was my own kid, our oldest daughter, in her first fender bender, which, fortunately, resulted in very little damage to her new car.  The other driver was on a motorcycle (!), and was not injured and her bike wasn't damaged really either.  Just a big scare and a ticket for failure to yield for our daughter.  Bummer!  She was trying to cross a very busy road at rush hour without a traffic light to aid her, and even though the traffic on her side of the road had stopped to let her cross, as she pulled out she didn't see the motorcyclist.  This could have been very bad indeed, but thank God it wasn't!  She is shaken up and very upset about getting a ticket one month after getting her license, but the police officer was very gracious to her and encouraging that this wasn't the end of the world.  We have to go to court now, but we will take her grades with us to show that she is a great kid, taking four AP classes right now, and not a "problem" kid or anything.  We are just thankful that this wasn't the very serious accident it could have been!  Just another day in life of our family.  Sigh!

Back from Birminghmam

I arrived back from Birmingham late Friday night after spending the week with my sister and her husband and their newly paralyzed son.  This was not a week one easily forgets.  I am glad to be home with my family, but my heart is with Heidi and Michael and their precious son Daniel who is facing a huge paradigm shift as they say, learning all over again how to walk, eat, and get around as a partial quadriplegic at the age of 19. We have great hope for that he will walk again someday. We are so thankful that God spared his life that night as the outcome could have been even more tragic than it already is.

Caroline laments quite often over how unfair her life is, how few friends she has, how many schools she has been shuffled between, how many meds she must take, but honestly, compared to being confined to a wheelchair, having others bathe you, dress you, feed you, and speak for you, she has very little to complain about.  I hope she really sees this, that as challenging as her life is, she can run, and play lacrosse, and go to college on time if she works hard.  She has so much to be thankful for even when things are really difficult!!

I am doing fine myself.  I think I have this weird ability to compartmentalize my thinking when shocking things happen.  I sort of detach emotionally and go into action mode.  I have been doing this since I was in college, and maybe it is a mild form of dissociative disorder or maybe it is just a God-given way of protecting myself emotionally when the world collapses around me.  I don't feel much of anything when others around me are feeling so much that they are falling apart.  I just go into thinking mode.  Maybe later, at other times, I allow myself to feel and to cry.  But in the moment of crisis, I become a machine and just do. This is quite helpful at times when needed and I have used this a lot when Caroline has been in crisis time and again.

Caroline continues to develop friendships on the lacrosse team, and one in particular shows great promise, the other homeschooled girl I mentioned before.  An opportunity arose for Caroline to go on the retreat with our church's youth group and she showed interest in going, but unfortunately she has two back to back games on Saturday.  She could have missed one of them, but missing both would have been very unsupportive of her team and this is the second to the last weekend of games.  So she decided to stay and play in the games, which was a very hard decision.  We would have encourage her to skip the game if she had only one.  Oh well, at least she is showing an interest int the Youth Group again, which she did go to last night even though she was afraid.  We will just continue to encourage her to go on Sunday nights.

We leave for a week at the beach soon, for our last "family" vacation with Elizabeth before she goes to college.  We debated about spending this kind of money while my husband is unemployed, but there are somethings you can't put a price tag on, like making memories with your kids before they fly the nest. Thank you for the tax refund, Uncle Sam!

I hope you are all well, though I know many of you and your kids are not, facing hospitalizations and school issues and health insurance nightmares.  Thank you for all of the messages of support and prayer for Daniel and his parents.  They appreciate them sooooo much, really!

Blessings!
Megan

Update on Daniel

My nephew Daniel has developed pneumonia from being on the ventilator or perhaps from aspirating something before the EMTs found the car wreck.  They were upside down in water or something like that I hear, so he may have ingested creek water.   He was the only one injured at all.  At this time they are calling him a partial quadriplegic, meaning he has limited use of his upper body.  The swelling around his spinal cord needs to come down before we know for sure what mobility he has retained in his arms.  He can feel some sensation in his legs, but can't move them, which is apparently typical.  Right now we are communicating with him using a letter board to which we point and he nods to signal as we spell out words.  Very tedious and frustrating for him and for us.  My sister and her husband are so exhausted.  Watching the agony on their faces when waves of grief overcome them is truly heartrending.  No parent should ever have to go through this.  We know that God has Daniel in His hands and has a great purpose for his life, however changed his future seems.  My own family been through so much with Caroline, but this is a whole different level of suffering.  I am thankful I can be here with them until Friday.  They will need all the support and prayer that we can give! Thank you for praying.  We of course want a miracle that he will walk again, and we pray for a miracle, knowing that this may not be God's plan, but trusting in His goodness nonetheless.

Please Pray for Daniel

My 19 year old nephew Daniel was in a serious car accident last night and was airlifted to the University of Alabama Medical Center with a spinal cord injury.  Please pray for him, for healing, and for my sister Heidi and her husband Michael who are overwhelmed at this horrible news.  I am flying out tomorrow to be with them.  He had surgery today on his broken neck vertebrae but the prognosis for regaining the use of his legs isn't great.  He is a very active, athletic young man with dreams of college ahead of him.   God is big and can do big miracles, but miracles aren't always His plan, but we do pray for complete recovery.  Thank you for praying!

Please Donate by Midnight to the Matching Gift Challenge for JBRF!

The Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation is in line to receive a matching $75,000 gift and today is the last day to donate!  Donate at www.jbrf.bbnow.org .  I did, and I hope you do too!

"Can I Date?"

The answer, succinctly, is no.  Caroline, much to her credit, approached my husband and I with this serious question today.  She likes a boy she met at the nearby high school while playing wall ball up there.  We are so proud that she asked us to go out for coffee so she could share with us her feelings about this boy and ask permission to date him.  Given her recent lack of truthfulness, this is a very good sign and we will be rewarding her for choosing to be so honest and for honoring us as her parents to come to us first.

But, this is not the time in her life when we feel she can handle the temptations of having a boyfriend.  With her many struggles with self-control, adding that of romance to it all just isn't wise.  She is disappointed and hopefully won't go behind our backs with this.  I pray she will trust us that we know her well enough that our decision is truly in her best interest.  One day a great guy will hopefully come along when she is older (much older ) and wiser and able to handle it.

A Car, A Party, and a Retreat

We were able to get a car for our oldest this past weekend, a Honda CRV, so that crisis is solved and I no longer have to share a car with my very busy senior in high school.  Yay!  This will indeed make my life a whole lot easier.  Caroline has way too many appointments for me to be without a car.

Another bright spot for this weekend was that Caroline went to the girls lacrosse party on Friday at one of the girl's homes and had a great time.  She didn't spend the night, but neither did the majority of the team, so all was good.  We got the impression the girls behaved themselves and that Caroline didn't do anything to embarrass herself too much.  Whew!  I did catch her in a lie yesterday about where she was going on a walk out of our neighborhood and promptly picked her up in my car after a few minutes later.  I had this overwhelming feeling she wasn't headed where she said she was going and decided to "check" on her as I went to the store.  Sometimes, we just have to go with our gut, don't we?  She wasn't doing anything bad when I found her, she just wasn't supposed to be there.  Sigh.  I just want the truth and nothing but the truth.

I went on a women's retreat with our church from Friday to Saturday.  The time was very challenging as the topic was finding true rest for ourselves in the midst of our busyness.  I must admit I get very little true rest and refreshment during the week.  I guess I would consider Sunday morning to be refreshing and exhausting too.  I am an introvert by nature and being around lots of people in a big room instantly drains me.  I need alone time which I rarely get.  But if I am intentional about it, maybe I could do this, planning out time on Sunday afternoons to just be by myself for an hour or two.  Easier said than done.  Also, why I spend all day cleaning up the kitchen on Sunday is a mystery.  Enough!  Paper plates on Sundays, because I need a break, folks!

I am struggling with intense anxiety this morning about our finances.  I had nightmares all night.  I know that nothing is truly perfectly secure in this life but I sure long for security!  I want to know that we will never go through unemployment again, ever, but God doesn't guarantee that life will go as planned, does He?  I have to trust that all will work out, but maybe not the way I had hoped or dreamed.  I can cling to my plans, and be miserable, or I can cling to God and know peace.