Not Enough

So remember a few weeks ago when I wrote about the darkness? It was bad. It had been bad for a while now. I think I thought I was hiding it better than I had been but it was there BIG time.

Once I finally admitted how bad things were I floundered around for a few days trying to figure out what to do. Then one day I just decided to get up. I decided I was the only one who could pull myself up out of that hole…

So I started paying attention to what I was filling my head with. I started carving out time for myself. I started caring. Let me tell you finding time for me has been the hardest part. I’ve actually been getting myself up around 4:40 every morning. I go to the gym (most mornings) then I come home and have time to spend some quality time in the Word. It has also helped me not feel so stressed and rushed in the mornings.

Another thing I’ve been doing is meal prepping on the weekends. It has helped SO much! All we have to do is grab a meal and read the directions … but that’s a whole other post!

So I’ve also been reading a lot! I’ve grabbed the people whose words are good, whose words breathe life and I’ve been saturating my brain with them. And you know what? It’s helped. I feel better. Even on hard days, I feel like I’m in a good place.

Things are still hard. I still feel like I’m in this long process of losing my mother and there are days when I don’t really want to care or try, but I’m working on giving myself some grace on those days. There are mornings when I didn’t even get home until 9 the night before … my alarm goes off and I just want to sleep. I’m working on giving myself grace on those days. There are days when I NEED a cheeseburger if I’m going to make it through and you know what? I’m working on giving myself grace on those days.

Why is grace so hard? Why do I usually offer it so freely to others and have such a hard time with offering it to myself?

I want to believe the absolute best about people. I want to believe there is still good in this world. I want to offer 2^nd and 94^th chances for people to turn it around because I’ve been offered the same. But when it comes to giving myself that same chance … well … it’s just hard.

I’ve been thinking and reading a lot about grace lately. I’m currently doing two online bible studies and I would encourage you if you aren’t partaking to get on board. Every morning you get the devotional sent to your inbox. They are not laborious devotions with mountains of questions to answer and passages to look up, although those have their place as well, but in this busy season of my life I need simple. I need the heavy lifting already done for me. I just need to soak it in and let it saturate.

She Reads Truth (http://shereadstruth.com/) has monthly plans. It gives you scripture and then it gives the devotion, followed up with some application at the end. The other one I adore right now is If:Equip (http://www.ifequip.com). This one is just scripture, that’s it. Then a short two minute video to pull out some good stuff at the end. Just soooo good. Trust me on this, have I ever led you wrong here?

Okay but back to grace. So this morning in my reading I found this gem…

Grace is the great leveler — we all need it, heaping amounts of it, all the time.

We ALL need it. All the time. Do you know who is included in that we? Yep, us. We need it. It is our life blood. It is our fight song… we need Grace.

 

 

Do you know what the most beautiful thing about this is … it’s ours for the taking. One of the hardest things for me is coming to realization that I CANNOT earn this grace. I cannot be good enough, smart enough, studious enough, put together enough, feed my kid all the healthy meals enough, take care of myself enough, protect and guard my marriage enough, treat my family lovingly enough … anything enough to earn this grace. I CANNOT earn it. I have to take it.

That’s hard for me.  I would bet I’m not alone here.

This life is hard. It knocks us down … hard. But through it all… God does not abandon us. He does not leave us. I love this …

When we are faithful and when we are faithless, our God reigns. Whatever the circumstances we find ourselves in, He is the one true King.

Gah so good! It just takes the pressure off. Do you need the load lightened today … there is hope. Don’t give up. Keep fighting, keep going and know that our God reigns.

Update on Life and the Walk to End Alz

I have had good intentions of writing more … but it just never seems to work out. There are just never enough hours in the day, especially when all I want to do after the boy goes to bed is binge watch Netflix J!

Things around here are moving along pretty steady. We have good days; we have not so good days. Then we usually throw in a couple heartbreaking days, but overall we are doing pretty well. My dad amazes me daily. He has become the full time caregiver. Mom can’t be alone really at all, but at least not for more than a really short period of time. She wanders, gets lost, and gets so easily confused, it’s just not good for her to be alone. One of our current struggles is getting her to tell us when she goes somewhere. We’ve had evenings where we search the house over and can’t find her anywhere. Panic sets in and then someone spots her on the back porch. We’ve made a rule she has to tell us when she goes outside, but she forgets. This is just how living with someone with this disease is though.

We are learning to manage and take the difficult days in stride. They don’t knock us down quite as hard as in the beginning. It’s so sad how you just learn to accept this stupid disease.

We are about to embark on some serious change. We spent time talking with our old doctor before he left us L and everyone decided that if we were going to do this now was the time. So the hubs and I are about to buy my brother’s house, he and his wife are going to buy my parent’s house, and then my parents are going to build a very small house in between both of us that will be handicap accessible. The loans have all been approved we are just waiting on appraisals at this point. I think it is going to be really good. Mom and Dad will be building something small and simple. It will be catered specifically to her and what her changing needs are. The doctor feels lie as she loses her sight completely this will be a good step in having a place for her to feel comfortable.

We don’t talk about this much but…there will come a day when she won’t be able to care for herself at all. On the heartbreaking days we see glimpses of this and it stinks, but my dad wants her at home with him for as long as possible and building this home can help with that.

In October we are going to see a new doctor. She’s terrified. They most recently went to see a doctor here in town and it did not go well. Within two minutes this doctor decided that mom had been misdiagnosed and had MS. I could write a whole post on how angry this makes me … but it doesn’t matter because she won’t be seeing him again. We are going to see Dr. Hope in OKC.  We are hoping that she will be able to just help us manage as we progress. Mom is terrified she’ll want to do more tests and stuff we just don’t want to deal with. I’ve told her we won’t. We are in charge of her treatment. It stinks our doctor left but we will figure it out…one step at a time. That seems to be the motto of my life lately!

Lastly, I just want to talk about the walk! Oh my gosh you guys…I’m not even sure I have the right words to say because THANK YOU just doesn’t seem like enough.

On August 12, I posted and said we were about 61% of our goal. Today August 22 – 10 days later – we are $10 away from our team goal. I want to blow our team goal out of the water. I can’t even explain to you what this means to my mother. Every time I tell her someone new has donated or joined her team she cries. She keeps telling me she didn’t know all these people still cared …

It’s not too late to join us or to give. I’ll post the link below. 

http://act.alz.org/site/TR/Walk2015/OK-Oklahoma?pg=team&fr_id=7738&team_id=259183

I’m also trying to have some t-shirts made. Can you let me know if you’d be interested in purchasing? They will have this on the front:

And then on the back hopefully it will say #we <3 Susie.

I need an idea of how many I need to order. I’ll be reaching out to you soon who have joined our team and our planning to walk with details. If you are planning on walking with us but haven’t joined (or just don’t know how – like my sweet Mammaw) reach out to me so I include you in the planning. The walk is three weeks from today – eek!!

As always the support and encouragement you give blows us away … thank you.